Im amazed at the media fallout from the result against Germany. I don’t care what non football journalists say, who have the job of filling the papers with meaningless articles just so their paper can claim to have the most comprehensive coverage. Cough Cough Paul Kent (He must be so pissed off he has to write about football). It’s the football journalists reaction to the loss that is most alarming.

We need to put this into perspective. WE WERE NOT EXPECTED TO WIN. Who cares if it is 4-0 or 1-0. Once it got to 2-0 and Cahill was sent off, heads were down and it could have been any score line. But this doesn’t really hurt our campaign as badly as people are making it out to be. The reaction to the result is hurting us and hopefully the players have a good think about it today and realise that as the group stands, we still have a good chance of progressing. We simply need to beat Ghana on Sunday morning, that is what was expected before the tournament and nothing has changed.

The Ghana – Serbia game was a good game, but it can hardly be argued that Ghana deserved the 3 points. A silly handball in the box with 5 mins to play let Ghana gain a 3 points from a game I felt probably deserved to go the way of Serbia, or at best a draw. So Australia have no reason to fear Ghana. I think a slight change to move Beauchamp to centre defence to add some pace and Kewell come in for Cahill and that’s it. It was one loss to a world class opponent that has every chance to be holding up the trophy at tournaments end. We don’t need to overreact and play it or more than what it is.

It could be worse, we could have lost 1-0 to Ghana. Then we would have reason to believe the tournament is a lost cause.

It also must be remembered Australia has not played an opponent with such pace, intensity and class on the ball like that in a long time. Asian qualification doesnt really provide it and no firendlies can ever really prepare us for the real thing. Our squad doesnt have the players who play club football in that environment either, so it is a good learning experience.

Our final 16 qualification has ALWAYS rested on beating Ghana and drawing Serbia. Write us off already at your own will, but Ill be up Saturday night supporting them and knowing our WC rests on results against Ghana and Serbia. Maybe, just maybe, the removal of expectation and pressure may be a welcome relief on the eve of not the biggest games in our campaign, but certainly the most important.


Edited by Song: 15/6/2010 07:46:23 AM