Arzani: that's what happens when you just go bang. Exciting prospect.

Atkinson also looked quite good first game back from injury.

Young kids look the goods so far. Atkinson after having so much time out looks great in the ball.

@Holding Bidfielder

Completely agree there and hopefully we start to see more consistency in his performance this second half. Other important apaect for Arzani this gam eis to hopefully see out 90 minutes. So far he's looking pretty fit and a fraction quicker too.

Geez he has to make the WC squad. Have a run in the friendlies. Preferably not play against France, keep the powder dry.

Then against Denmark.

Bang!

Not sure what we can learn in the friendlies. It's a step up but it's not a competitive hitout.

Playing a friendly won't cap tie him.

Yeah true. I mean just for the sake of not throwing him right into the WC.

The cap him argument I couldn't give a crap about. The next competitive match is the WC. He should be at the WC on merit. He's very gifted in areas that Australia is shit.

The thing he would add is just that x factor of exploiting little spaces that our flat footed 11 doesn't. He'd definitely improve the side in the long run. But in reality we've got a kid who potentially has only shown something in professional football for 6 months before a WC. And many of the cheeky moves he does around players in the HAL would see him get utterly barreled in a league like the championship.

He won't be ball hogging and weaving around a penalty box against France.

He wouldn't find things nearly as easy there. And he sure as hell needs to become more disciplined.

But thinking just of the WC, while it will be far trickier than the A-League, talent is talent. I seriously think it will translate at a higher level. It's the combination of close control, pace and agility. It's just very, very difficult for defenders to deal with. Those from France, Denmark and Peru can be counted on to do a much more reliable job than the ones in the A-League. But chances will still come.

And Arzani's inclusion should substantially increase the value of both Mooy and Rogic, they need an Arzani type of footballer to work with.

You know nobody is watching a match when ladbrokes lets you cash your bets at the same price after city gets a red. Make that decline in the HAL work for you.

That looked like a clean tackle to me by Schenkeveld?

Not many ? hardly any of them but for Mooy or Rogic.
Your kidding right mentioning Leckie, wouldn't have a clue how to do that.

I reckon we'd have nothing to lose trying out the young fella.
We have NO options as such.
He would have it difficult for sure as mentioned, defense's would be right on him but for that one moment that can make a player in the big time worth a shot.

Fuck

Isn't football cruel lol......
Good on PG they dug in and against 10 was coming.
Farfar better game than the mv reds one.

A pacy winger at Hertha Berlin couldn't do that against Djulbic, the glorified training cone? Let's all calm our tits.

Great end to the game.

Leckie did it with Hertha: making a streaking run down the wing, cutting inside, opening room for a shot, and then curling it into the back of the net. A couple of his early season goals with Hertha were similar to what Arzani did.

But regardless, we agree on Arzani. He has shown enough to prove he can be valuable for the national team. He deserves to go to Russia.

It got me thinking, how many more Arzani's are out there in the youth leagues around Australia?

I listened to his radio interview on Football Nation Radio (great by the way football 24-7 show) and mentioned he only started to play club football by age 10, he didn't go through the elite programs like the FFA NC inspired SAP programs or alike, but got identified by Craig Foster coached NSWIS and then the rest is history from the AIS.

Our youth pathways and talent ID is all over the place, are they doing the job? Because if someone like Arzani can be Identified playing for Coogee United who are hardly an NPL2 team then surely there is more talents like him around whom are haven't identified 

yes that he did.
I'll give him credit finally doing it at 27yrs with 49 Roo appearances for a return of 6.
Yes I'm being harsh but thems the facts.

I'm a fan for any Youth showing signs having the balls and having a go re Aranzi, something we've lacked for years.

Barca, as you know we've with others have had many posts on YL etc.....
Its woeful.
The robots I feel sorry for them.
As noted Aranzi wasn't involved in SAP YL says it all.
There is heaps of them out there but our so called TD's/Association heads have their heads in the sand and more interested parading around as if they are big shots and just taking money off hopeful sucker parents.

I think it highly probable that the system is rather flawed. But, as for scouts and so on, without knowing anything of how Arzani played when they would have watched him, maybe he just didn't play well enough on the day. Footballers have good days and bad days. They can only go by what they have in front of them. Some guys will have an absolute shocker one day, and be a whole different footballer another day. So it's tricky to say too much about individual cases.

But hey, it might just be yet another case of negligence.

I recall a few years ago, when the Young Socceroos were in the Youth World Cup and played reasonably well against the South American champions (I think they still didn't win, but anyway).

Craig Foster and everybody was going on and on and on about how technically great they were.

I was thinking- hmm, yes, but to a very limited extent. They are passing well and moving well off the ball. The rest? Worse than what we've had in the past. Nobody with an individual flair (except De Silva). And DDS in more of a regista kind of role where he'd just distribute the ball beautifully. Nobody was taking the opponent on individually. It was as if they either had no idea or it was forbidden or both.

These days we have around 30 NPL clubs, whom has there SAP programs, TDs, elite coaching and one of the best young talents in a very long time never went through that process at all.

I think it has exposed a serious flaw in the youth development system if a kid that was playing for association club can get selected for his state team and not from a standard NPL team, how many more Arzani's are we missing out on when there is so much effort put in identifying elite players as young as 9 or 10.

Scouting and talent ID is all over the place and so much time and effect have been put in place with these programs, its no wonder we dont produce the quality of players like we used to.

You mean this article?  https://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blog/2013/06/23/young-socceroos-outplay-misconceptions

I think it was the result against Colombia and how it was done rather than the quality of players we had, my issue goes down to are we identifying the best talent possible and looking for that x-factor players that are hidden in the system or just outside of it like Arzani. 

There's been far too much emphasis on strength, speed in the past which probably resulted in that young socceroo team in 2013 and De Silva being that player which we realised is important in how we wanted to play.

I mean the studio analysis with Craig Foster and a couple of others. That article is in keeping with it, yep.



Here I don't quite agree. Without remembering all the finer details of how individuals played in the squad, I don't think the issue with that Young Socceroos squad was too much focus on speed and strength. Reading Craig Foster's article, he's rejoicing because it seems to him that Australia is finally focusing on technique.

Arzani is so good, in part, because he has that immense speed and agility. He has both athletic ability and technical ability. It's almost requisite to have great speed and agility to beat opponents in 1 vs 1 situations. The problem with the way Craig Foster and people on this forum were talking is that it became too extreme. They noted, correctly, that years ago Australian footballers tended to be good athletes but the technically good ones were a rarity (a lot of whom happened to be part of the Golden Generation). But they then talked in talked in terms of a false dichotomy:

technique or athletic ability.

Classic false dichotomy. It's possible to have both technique and athleticism. So, whereas, in the past footballers who might be technically good but not so athletic might get overlooked, I feared we'd go the other way. And that the system would try to stamp out individual athleticism and individualism. And that's what I noticed in that particular Young Socceroos side. Very, little individualism. No 1 vs 1 ability was displayed by them in that tournament.

Not only is the technique vs athleticism a false dichotomy, it's also a terrible oversimplification. The reality is that different parts of the park require different balances of technique and athleticism. Central midfield does not require so much athleticism. It's so congested, there's so little space and it's such pure football. It's all about technique and football IQ. As such, some of the best in the world there have been not so quick; Paul Scholes, Andrea Pirlo, Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez, Luka Modric.

But in the wide areas and up front, it's very rare to find world class footballers who do not possess both excellent technical ability and speed and agility. How many of these guys are exceedingly fast and agile? Cristiano Ronaldo, Leo Messi, Thierry Henry, Luis Suarez, Antoine Greizmann, Gareth Bale, Eden Hazard, Neymar, Sergio Aguero, Alexis Sanchez? ALL of them are very fast and agile. All of them are world-class athletes. Quite simply, it's very rare for there to be a world-class attacking footballer who is not exceedingly fast and agile.

So, Barca, you understand the problem with the FFA and the Australian football community suggesting that Australian footballers don't need to have speed?

100% got the ball and nothing else. When the refereeing is that comical the game desends into a lottery, you may as well just let the ref toss a coin to decide who wins.

 

Irrespective of whether he got the ball it was a stupid challenge to make considering he already copped a yellow for mouthing off at the ref

Didn’t see the game. Has he leapfrogged Petratos and Mabil for a wing spot?