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bettega
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That article on Croatian football highights a few things:
- Croatia has no plan
- Croatia has no national curriculum
- Croatia puts limited resources into training facilities
- Croatia has rundown stadiums which are decades old
- most of the pitches kids train on are terrible, may or may not have grass
ON top of that, their top division has average attendances of a few thousand.
But Croatians possess one thing we don't: a genuine football culture. A love of the game handed down from one generation to the next.
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TheSelectFew
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+xThat article on Croatian football highights a few things: - Croatia has no plan - Croatia has no national curriculum - Croatia puts limited resources into training facilities - Croatia has rundown stadiums which are decades old - most of the pitches kids train on are terrible, may or may not have grass ON top of that, their top division has average attendances of a few thousand. But Croatians possess one thing we don't: a genuine football culture. A love of the game handed down from one generation to the next. This. Something the franchise system cant buy.
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BA81
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Romeo Jozak has released the Croatian FA's national-curriculum he created http://development-curriculum.romeojozak.com/ so watch this space in the coming years to see how much better they can get😮 As for how we can improve as a football nation...it can only be through a perfect storm of converging factors: HAL expansion & pro/rel, loosening or abolishing the salary cap altogether, increased investment @ all levels, reducing rego fees, emphasising technique/skill & tactics over mere physicality & athleticism...the list goes on, and none of it's gonna be delivered by Lowy & Gallop so they have to be turfed out, ASAP💡
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BA81
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The main one though, is we have to ditch this practice of copying what the so-called traditional Aussie sports do - football's its own beast, and thus has nothing vital to learn from AFL/cricket etc. Realising that would be as good a start as any, IMHO.
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AJF
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southmelb
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The Croatian FA are targetting Peter Crouch
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paulc
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+x(1) 4 million in a football obsessed country vs 24 million in a country where football is 3rd (at best) sport. (2) Poor local economy makes football an escape route for youngsters. (3) Free coaching. (4) Geography helps best players in the country play with/against the best players in the country. (5) Proximity to the rest of Europe makes it easy for them to travel to better nations. (6) At international level they play against the best in Europe and the World, most of our games are against poor opposition. This provides the best explanation. On point 2 that could apply to all sports and I use tennis as an example. Such a hugely played sport across the world and the Croatians still excel. They have very little as a nation and not too long ago involved in a serious war. Always something to prove and always wanting recognition as achievers. Australia could never replicate Croatia or win a world cup unless our national sporting landscape changes significantly.
In a resort somewhere
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433
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The reality is that most Australians are happy to sit back smugly and pretend we're a great "sporting nation" because we're good at alot of shit that no one really gives a fuck about. The only "world class" internationally relevant team would probably be the Mens basketball team, besides that no one really cares about Union, league or cricket (which we're shit at anyway).
We pretend we're sports mad because we care about things that no one else on Earth cares about. If you don't live in Melbourne it's hard for you to grasp the absolute obsession that people have with AFL. Hopefully in a generation or two that dead-end sport will be irrelevant thanks to demographics.
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Melbcityguy
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This is actually one of the most interesting topics I’ve seen discussed on here. I agree with a lot said one thing I want to add is to see more guys like Tomas Broich who lives and breathes the game to play in our league and stay on to be a manager one day
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AJF
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+x+x(1) 4 million in a football obsessed country vs 24 million in a country where football is 3rd (at best) sport. (2) Poor local economy makes football an escape route for youngsters. (3) Free coaching. (4) Geography helps best players in the country play with/against the best players in the country. (5) Proximity to the rest of Europe makes it easy for them to travel to better nations. (6) At international level they play against the best in Europe and the World, most of our games are against poor opposition. This provides the best explanation. On point 2 that could apply to all sports and I use tennis as an example. Such a hugely played sport across the world and the Croatians still excel. They have very little as a nation and not too long ago involved in a serious war. Always something to prove and always wanting recognition as achievers. Australia could never replicate Croatia or win a world cup unless our national sporting landscape changes significantly. If that was true then African Nations which are much poorer than Croatia would be contesting the final and so called rich countries like Germany & France would never win. More excuses unfortunately.
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WSF
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Don't worry guys, Arnie is coming in.......................
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socceroo_06
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+xConveThe main one though, is we have to ditch this practice of copying what the so-called traditional Aussie sports do - football's its own beast, and thus has nothing vital to learn from AFL/cricket etc. Realising that would be as good a start as any, IMHO. ...except that Cricket Australia's CEO is a former first-class cricketer. AFL's CEO was on the Rookie list of Carlton Football Club. How many games of Football have Steve Lowy & David Gallop played? Conversely, Davor Suker is the President of the HNS.
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paulc
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+x+x+x(1) 4 million in a football obsessed country vs 24 million in a country where football is 3rd (at best) sport. (2) Poor local economy makes football an escape route for youngsters. (3) Free coaching. (4) Geography helps best players in the country play with/against the best players in the country. (5) Proximity to the rest of Europe makes it easy for them to travel to better nations. (6) At international level they play against the best in Europe and the World, most of our games are against poor opposition. This provides the best explanation. On point 2 that could apply to all sports and I use tennis as an example. Such a hugely played sport across the world and the Croatians still excel. They have very little as a nation and not too long ago involved in a serious war. Always something to prove and always wanting recognition as achievers. Australia could never replicate Croatia or win a world cup unless our national sporting landscape changes significantly. If that was true then African Nations which are much poorer than Croatia would be contesting the final and so called rich countries like Germany & France would never win. More excuses unfortunately. Have ever lived in poor African nations? Goals made of sticks, pitch where they graze their cow, rolled up cloths as a ball..............
In a resort somewhere
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crimsoncrusoe
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When your governing body places metrics above everything else it might explain why we are so poor overall.
FFA has no plan for engaging the whole football community and hence for every young player to rise to the top based on merit.
FFA has built a system based on money and what it percieves football should have as an image nationally.Not a merit based system based on football ability.
When stadium sizes and crowd sizes are more important than generating the best players and best teams ,we can see the result.The football pyramid should be a priority.Everything else flows from that.With or without money.As Croatia and many nations have shown.
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AJF
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+xWhen your governing body places metrics above everything else it might explain why we are so poor overall.FFA has no plan for engaging the whole football community and hence for every young player to rise to the top based on merit.FFA has built a system based on money and what it percieves football should have as an image nationally.Not a merit based system based on football ability.When stadium sizes and crowd sizes are more important than generating the best players and best teams ,we can see the result.The football pyramid should be a priority.Everything else flows from that.With or without money.As Croatia and many nations have shown. Interesting that the US didnt make it to the WC and they have same franchise and metric based league we do. Also interestingly their poster boy Pulisic recently said the only option for gifted players to develop is to leave the US at a young age.
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RoyalDave
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With or without a plan the obvious has been stated that there are not enough opportunities in the A League for locals.
I'm optimistic that improvement is on the horizon but it will still take some time.
A League expansion will help a little, but ultimately the proposed 2nd division (even without P/R) will provide a massive boost to the landscape - it can't come soon enough.
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bluebird
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+xSick of the AFL NRL arguments. Even if you divided Australia's population by 4 and allocated each quarter to the AFL, the NRL and 'others' you've still got a base population of 6 million people for football. Tired of the same old shit excuses. There's plenty of reasons why we're not great but the AFL and NRL stealing the players is not one of them. The AFL / NRL argument is just a bullshit excuse. Its a "sales" argument measuring potential along the lines of x population means x players What baffles me is why people opt to look at population and try to guess the number of players when a google search can give the figures: Australia: ~1,000,000 registered players Croatia: ~ 150,000 registered players This number of codes is just a security blanket for ineptitude At the very bottom kids play for fun. At the very top players play for entertainment Sport is a discipline. Its competitive and fierce. Football as a truly global game conclusively demonstrates that there is no correlation between population and ability. To be good at something you need to work hard Our stats show that we have the players and the resources. We just aren't doing anything with them. And people might cry "big fish" syndrome and think we'll be better off as part of Europe but we arent even kings of Asia. We dont qualify for the Olympics and our youth levels are shit. And more recently we finished 3rd in our world cup qualifying group With our number of actual players and investment in sport there are no excuses.
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AJF
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+xWith or without a plan the obvious has been stated that there are not enough opportunities in the A League for locals. I'm optimistic that improvement is on the horizon but it will still take some time. A League expansion will help a little, but ultimately the proposed 2nd division (even without P/R) will provide a massive boost to the landscape - it can't come soon enough. Without more 1st division opportunities, 2nd division will be a graveyard for youth development also.
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Derider
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They simply had 2 golden generations in quick succession. They definitely haven't done anything special on the federation, league, or structural levels. They just got very lucky with the players. They should fade away completely when guys like Modric and Raketic start to retire.
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TheSelectFew
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+x+x+x(1) 4 million in a football obsessed country vs 24 million in a country where football is 3rd (at best) sport. (2) Poor local economy makes football an escape route for youngsters. (3) Free coaching. (4) Geography helps best players in the country play with/against the best players in the country. (5) Proximity to the rest of Europe makes it easy for them to travel to better nations. (6) At international level they play against the best in Europe and the World, most of our games are against poor opposition. This provides the best explanation. On point 2 that could apply to all sports and I use tennis as an example. Such a hugely played sport across the world and the Croatians still excel. They have very little as a nation and not too long ago involved in a serious war. Always something to prove and always wanting recognition as achievers. Australia could never replicate Croatia or win a world cup unless our national sporting landscape changes significantly. If that was true then African Nations which are much poorer than Croatia would be contesting the final and so called rich countries like Germany & France would never win. More excuses unfortunately. This .That excuse is bullshit.
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Muz
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+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+x+xAussies, no matter what they bang on about - are just not that great or passionate about sport like other nations. They pretend they are, but it's in a boofhead get blind at the footy mate way. Other countries live for their national teams. Go to a wallabies game and you'll see fans in brand new scarfs that they are ready to put back in the cupboard for for 6 months etc. Go to the balkans and you have kids playing from dusk until dawn in the streets. It means everything to them FFS, the one sport we invented - AFL, we are not even good at. peope come fom overseas having never played it and becoime a professional after 1 year. No wonder you get a point for missing. Nice subjective opinion with 0 fucking evidence. What evidence would you like mr angry? All posts require evidence now for his royal highness? Well you could start with the Olympics. The only objective measure of a nations general sporting prowess: Per Capita - Australia finished 15th in Rio Per GDP - Australia finished 45th in Rio ^^ This tells me that we punch above our weight compared to countries with greater population, but we are inefficient in our resource allocation. Conversely.......... Per Capita - Croatia finished 5th in Rio Per GDP - Croatia finished 14th in Rio Not only does Croatia punch above its weight in population, but they are more efficient with their resource allocation. Australia wastes a lot of money in sport. We could learn a lot more from Croatia in terms of how to spend our money more efficiently. That is an objective starting point. So you've highlighted how we are not that good at sport, which is what I said. No, I highlighted that we are good at sport but wasteful with our resources. ke out Take out swimming and we'd be ranked 100th in the Olympics. TSF is right. There's only about 3 sports which other countries play in large numbers that we are decent in. Mens field hockey. Womens basketball and Womens waterpolo. And that's about it. Take out swimming? One of the most participated sports in the world.....'righto. Swimming? We're talking about sports where loads of countries participate. Until recently it was us and the USA. And what happened when other countries starting taking it seriously? We got our arses handed to us on a plate with one of our worst performances at an Olympics ever. So yeah, swimming. There are 209 national federations that are members of FINA. If that is not loads of countries that participate (ie the whole world) I don't know what is?Many countries outside of AUS/USA have been FINA members for over 100 years. Have a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FINA_member_federations And....there's probably 209 countries that play table tennis. Participating in and doing well at a sport are 2 different things. The only reason we do well at it is because no other country besides us and the USA (and the Soviets back in the day) were throwing money at it. It’s patently obvious, as other countries increase their spending, we will never achieve a top 5 Olympic spot again. (Something we've used for years to boost our egos about how 'good we are at sport'.)
Member since 2008.
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TheSelectFew
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+x+xSick of the AFL NRL arguments. Even if you divided Australia's population by 4 and allocated each quarter to the AFL, the NRL and 'others' you've still got a base population of 6 million people for football. Tired of the same old shit excuses. There's plenty of reasons why we're not great but the AFL and NRL stealing the players is not one of them. The AFL / NRL argument is just a bullshit excuse. Its a "sales" argument measuring potential along the lines of x population means x players What baffles me is why people opt to look at population and try to guess the number of players when a google search can give the figures: Australia: ~1,000,000 registered players Croatia: ~ 150,000 registered players This number of codes is just a security blanket for ineptitude At the very bottom kids play for fun. At the very top players play for entertainment Sport is a discipline. Its competitive and fierce. Football as a truly global game conclusively demonstrates that there is no correlation between population and ability. To be good at something you need to work hard Our stats show that we have the players and the resources. We just aren't doing anything with them. And people might cry "big fish" syndrome and think we'll be better off as part of Europe but we arent even kings of Asia. We dont qualify for the Olympics and our youth levels are shit. And more recently we finished 3rd in our world cup qualifying group With our number of actual players and investment in sport there are no excuses. Surely Torres would fix this.
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LFC.
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+x+x+x+x+x+x+xAussies, no matter what they bang on about - are just not that great or passionate about sport like other nations. They pretend they are, but it's in a boofhead get blind at the footy mate way. Other countries live for their national teams. Go to a wallabies game and you'll see fans in brand new scarfs that they are ready to put back in the cupboard for for 6 months etc. Go to the balkans and you have kids playing from dusk until dawn in the streets. It means everything to them FFS, the one sport we invented - AFL, we are not even good at. peope come fom overseas having never played it and becoime a professional after 1 year. No wonder you get a point for missing. Nice subjective opinion with 0 fucking evidence. What evidence would you like mr angry? All posts require evidence now for his royal highness? Well you could start with the Olympics. The only objective measure of a nations general sporting prowess: Per Capita - Australia finished 15th in Rio Per GDP - Australia finished 45th in Rio ^^ This tells me that we punch above our weight compared to countries with greater population, but we are inefficient in our resource allocation. Conversely.......... Per Capita - Croatia finished 5th in Rio Per GDP - Croatia finished 14th in Rio Not only does Croatia punch above its weight in population, but they are more efficient with their resource allocation. Australia wastes a lot of money in sport. We could learn a lot more from Croatia in terms of how to spend our money more efficiently. That is an objective starting point. So you've highlighted how we are not that good at sport, which is what I said. No, I highlighted that we are good at sport but wasteful with our resources. Take out swimming and we'd be ranked 100th in the Olympics. TSF is right. There's only about 3 sports which other countries play in large numbers that we are decent in. Mens field hockey. Womens basketball and Womens waterpolo. And that's about it. We can add Surfing to the list....as socceroo-06 quoted lol...... We have had quite a few Mens World Champs over the years the current defending Womens Champ is ours. Men | | Women | - 2002: Layne Beachley
- 2003: Layne Beachley
- 2005: Chelsea Georgeson
- 2006: Layne Beachley
- 2007: Stephanie Gilmore
- 2008: Stephanie Gilmore
- 2009: Stephanie Gilmore
- 2010: Stephanie Gilmore
- 2012: Stephanie Gilmore
- 2014: Stephanie Gilmore
- 2016: Tyler Wright
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Love Football
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southmelb
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+xThey simply had 2 golden generations in quick succession. They definitely haven't done anything special on the federation, league, or structural levels. They just got very lucky with the players. They should fade away completely when guys like Modric and Raketic start to retire. Yeh its all luck, the players that country has produced since gaining independence is mind boggling. The next Modric and Rakitic are probably playing in Croatia now in front of 2,000 people at some run down venue...but but metrics!
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AJF
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+x+xThey simply had 2 golden generations in quick succession. They definitely haven't done anything special on the federation, league, or structural levels. They just got very lucky with the players. They should fade away completely when guys like Modric and Raketic start to retire. Yeh its all luck, the players that country has produced since gaining independence is mind boggling. The next Modric and Rakitic are probably playing in Croatia now in front of 2,000 people at some run down venue...but but metrics! They are already here and already playing in major leagues. But hey we got Arzani...... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alen_Halilovi%C4%87https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Vla%C5%A1i%C4%87https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ante_%C4%86ori%C4%87https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borna_Sosahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Bali%C4%87
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Derider
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+x+xThey simply had 2 golden generations in quick succession. They definitely haven't done anything special on the federation, league, or structural levels. They just got very lucky with the players. They should fade away completely when guys like Modric and Raketic start to retire. Yeh its all luck, the players that country has produced since gaining independence is mind boggling. The next Modric and Rakitic are probably playing in Croatia now in front of 2,000 people at some run down venue...but but metrics! It is luck. Pure luck. Their federation is a shambles and there is no specific or unusual development pathways to account for their success. They're certainly no Iceland. In 98, a lot of their star players were brought up in the Yugoslavian system, so this is really their first and only golden generation since independence. I'll be amazed if the next generation turns out anywhere near as good. I'm picking them to struggle to qualify for Qatar.
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grazorblade
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+x+x+xThey simply had 2 golden generations in quick succession. They definitely haven't done anything special on the federation, league, or structural levels. They just got very lucky with the players. They should fade away completely when guys like Modric and Raketic start to retire. Yeh its all luck, the players that country has produced since gaining independence is mind boggling. The next Modric and Rakitic are probably playing in Croatia now in front of 2,000 people at some run down venue...but but metrics! It is luck. Pure luck. Their federation is a shambles and there is no specific or unusual development pathways to account for their success. They're certainly no Iceland. In 98, a lot of their star players were brought up in the Yugoslavian system, so this is really their first and only golden generation since independence. I'll be amazed if the next generation turns out anywhere near as good. I'm picking them to struggle to qualify for Qatar. Probably is luck but lets enjoy an incredible story! I'll be cheering for croatia!
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AJF
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It's easier to say its luck than to look in the mirror and accept we are on the wrong path.
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Threezero4
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+xReality check, Croatia has 130,000 registered football players, Australia has over 1,000,000. But AFL, but Kulcha, but, but, but, all just excuses, Quality over quantity! Culture is hugely important, that's a fact not an excuse.
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Derider
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+xIt's easier to say its luck than to look in the mirror and accept we are on the wrong path. OK, so can you tell me what we can learn from Croatia on an organizational or development level? That it's possible to do well even with an incompetent federation and shit league? Alright, I suppose that does give us some kind of hope.
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