Most of them were at the nationals in Coffs Harbour last year and then in December they will be in Canberra for the NTC tournament with their respective states the a-league clubs will be fully aware of them.

What did your mates think of them?

These kids are on a different level to any Australian youth side I can remember.
Watch the full games, the individual skills fantastic.

its the skill set and performance
results dont matter at this age anyway

Good stuff.

Plans fell over as they do with uni students :lol:
But I'm determined to get them around for one of the games.
When do we play next?

I believe its tomorrow v Philippines

I believe its tomorrow v Philippines

Man... That schedule is very tough!

I could be wrong maybe its Thursday but these tournaments are usually on a tight schedule for financial reasons rather than football reasons. We also have a large squad playing average opponents so not to hard. Feel sorry for the Philippines having to chase the ball for 90 mins.

In such humid heat..

Final game of Group A

FT:
Vietnam 2-2 Timor Leste

It is the quality of skill.

In the past it has always been a weakness.

The current senior players have good game sense, tactical awareness, mental strength and hold their own physically. If these tyros can keep developing like they have to date, and acquire Aussies' current strengths, they will be more complete players than previous generations.

Do you have a link for results and ladders?

1St page. Wikipedia has an updated table.

I cannot see that happening, as we are a long way from the big money.

It may start occurring if the Socceroos perform like they have as a unit in recent times, with far more technical players on show.


It may also be that in the likelihood the HAL improves immeasurably, more maybe more Aussies will be recruited to Europe.

Apart from the longer season (the only advantage going to most moderate European leagues now) and bigger money, if the mooted improvement occurs playing in Europe may not be such an attraction as it once was.

As long as our players are deemed not good enough to play in the big five, and maybe Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Russia and Turkey, a European career may not be as significant as it once was.

When I read biographies of many former Socceroos, to be a pro footballer meant going overseas. I also think that many former and current players who live in Europe, and media who have been there for a long time, are not aware of how much the milieu has changed in Australian football.

Does anyone know if Mark Moric has had much playing time? If so, how did he go?

This and the fact this is an OFCesque type warm up tournament.

Watching a few of the streams the boys are playing well , credit to them.

i do believe some perspective is needed. Over a morning coffee I was informed that 1/3 ( 8 players ) of the joeys team is made up of the NSW NTC which just two weeks ago competed in the man cup under 15s tournament. They finished 16 of 20 teams. The NSW NTC team was made up of 2000 born players whereas the big euro teams had players born 2001 through to 2003 in minor cases.

Interesting.

A third is a fairly small proportion, but you have a point.

Who were those other teams in the Man Cup?

He has probably been in the top 2 or 3 best players. Absolute gun. I think he's played 2 of 3 games but I could be wrong. I've seen him play a couple of games at least.

Top scorer with 5 goal for the tournament.

Cheers

Doesn't he have 7? Thought he got 5 in the 2nd game alone...

If it was 2 weeks ago wouldn't the Aussie national team players have been in camp by then? Seeing they've been overseas for a week and a half now.

So perhaps the NSW NTC without the cream of national team players is a bit weak? Would be understandable.

Aussie players flew directly from Manchester to camp

Yeah mate, he has 6 goals in 2 games.

6 brah

If Mabil and De Silva are going for those sorts of fees, these kids ought to be going for something similar if they continue on.

Fair comment.

Da Silva is very highly rated in FFA circles.

I think it may be more of a question of Da Silva standing out against less skilful cohorts.

My eyesight isn't the best, but I've struggled to differentiate some of the players in the current Joeys. I think it is more a question of uniformity of level of skill though, being unable to differentiate players.

Having seen Da Silva, I think he is probably a more one sided player than many of the current Joeys.

Sold the kid short.

A little increase in quality leads to a huge jump in wages
i suspect if you graphed player salary vs say elo rating for a club you would get a pereto curve

so if we are currently producing players that transfer from the a league in the hundreds of thousands with the occasional in the millions its pretty reasonable to say that this generation which is better will transfer for millions