Well that was disappointing.

That sucks.

Damn thats sucks must have been a taught a footballing lesson, mind you France a very strong at under 17 and 20 level.

Recent under 17 Euro Champions, defeated Germany in the final 4-0.

Kind of takes away the hope they can do well in the World Cup now. :(

Crashing back to earth with a massive thud.

Do the USA play them too?

You are not kidding.

I think USA drew 1 all with France last week. Lets hope we get some video.

We must be miles off technically which to a degree is understandable but still disappointing.

The only answer may be to live and play in one of European youth leagues full time

USA drew 0 0 with France. Reports are they parked the bus and France had all possession and over 30 shots on goal.
Australia tried to play and had good periods, but were out classed.

Well I guess it's puts into perspective then, try to play against you get destroyed but you will learn a lot more on this way of playing rather than hiding face and parking the bus and relying a bit of luck to get a result.

And at under 17 level when they still developing I prefer we played and we learn something, anyway I hope they don't get too devastated by the result France are the best team at under 17 European Champs in May whom have destroyed every team to win the whole tournament.

Belgium were very lucky to draw them in the semi finals whilst France had 20 shots on target, they will be very strong in the WC you can only beat them by parking the bus.

Edited by Barca4life: 7/9/2015 10:33:32 AM

Learning how to park the bus ultimately achieves very little at youth level.

6-0 is a bitter result
would like to see the replay nonetheless as Im a supporter through thick and thin

I'm surprised the difference in technique is that great comparing the u17s coming through in say 2005 and today

There is a jump in class when you get to the u16s but probably not big enough to turn around a 6-0 deficit

It is far better to do what Australia tried to do and lose 6-0 than what the USA tried to do in a friendly.

Still France beat Germany 4-0 in a final, so they must be an excellent cohort.

Dont forget France's youth development along with Spain, Netherland and with Germany is one of the best in the world.

They have a heavy amount of elite players and coaches, a great benchmark for aspiring nations like us.

Whilst we are a small nation trying to learn from the best, we need to take a long term approach in our youth development as we don't have the numbers nor the resources.

I wouldn't panic as of yet.

I wouldn't mind if there was a replay on youtube like the last one...

Disappointing result but if the French are the European champions at this age then they probably have future ECL, WC and EPL stars among them. It might be a good learning curve for the Joeys, given they are stars at home, to see the worlds best at the same age up close. Having their asses handed to them should remove any cockiness going into the WC and hopefully inspire them to aim for greater mastery of their profession. It will be very interesting to see how this French team goes at the WC.

Was always going to be difficult against the worlds best. We are not the sort of nation that will park the bus for a result in a friendly and nor should we. Happy to lose trying to play football as that's the only way you will learn.
I do think that things are slowly changing at grass roots with development being the main focus but we have a long way to go.
Coaches and parents at junior level still reply "we have won every game" when asked how has you team gone this year. This is where it need to change (along with a few other areas) if we want to try and compete with the best.
Anyway the U16's Joeys are flying out tomorrow for Vietnam and I wish them all the best.

The outcry for OKONOUT if this was the 20s.

The model we use with the AIS is outdated in world terms. We pick a core group of players from age 14 or 15 and focus a lot of development money and time for the next few years. Very few other kids are brought in to see progression. By adopting this model we are failing to recognize late developers. Bring in a few overseas based players just before the World Cup is not sufficient


Other counties have multi camp with multiple players looked at closely and monitored. Why do we continue with such a old format.

In addition ais based coaches , technical directors aren't going to bring in new blood because they place their positions and livelihood at risk. They can't admit they got it wrong with player selection ....can they?.

6-0 is a thrashing.
But considering the players we had ,we can't be too surprised.Borrello,Edwards and McClaren are not top class technical players or remotely so.Then if you look at the rest of the team.It's lightweight in midfield ,with no grunt defensively or going forward.The backs are just average players even in the HAL.
My feeling is the age groups coming behind them will swamp them for higher honors eventually.
All the Aussie players can do ,is give it their best.If they did that and lost well.So be it.

Wrong age group mate, its under 17 level.

Was Ange going to change this?
I agree that's something that needs to be looked at.



Edited by Barca4life: 7/9/2015 03:39:30 PM

Edited by robbo: 7/9/2015 04:30:01 PM

How would you change the current format? What improvements would you like to see?

Not sure if has been mentioned by the FFA COE will be increased to 36 to 40 players scholarships next year. So its a start.

I would follow successful European based countries and do away with the full time model completely.
Have regular two monthly camps that go for two weeks then send players back to clubs and monitor rate of improvement. Coaches and technical directors could go out and scout these teams during the down time. More players could be looked at. Introduce overseas based camps for overseas based players. Increasing the bases of the pyramid to 100-200 is much better than 36-40.

Players at this age are developing at differing rates, don't make a call on a player , give them a two year scholarship and ostarise another player at their expense.

When you look at the team against France 90% of the players come for FFA centre of excellence. Is that because they are worthy?., is it because they have a two year scholarship and where worthy two years ago of the reward? Or is it because the coaches and technical director picked them two years ago and they must prove they are right?. Or is it look look FFA administaters out scholarship boys make up 90% of the squad we are doing a top job give me another working contract for the next two year?.

This sounds all great, but where would the money come from it's not like the FFA have money to burn....

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:oops: :oops:
Then that just sucks!

TheFFA centre of excellence budget is over 1.2 million per annum. Are you telling everyone we couldn't do the 8 camps each year and use coachs to scout through your the year with that budget???. Come on.

The biggest obstacle for the coaches scouting other players is that they simply do not want to travel and be away from ther families. I know this to be fact. They prefer to train a local based squad for approx 16 hrs per week and collect full time wages .... That's the real joke.

Oh and someone remind me what the TD does, what the team manager does, the marketing guy does.... There all full time employees????

There is plenty in the budget it's just rearranging the resources to suit what Australian football requires not what people in positions of power want in lifestyle

Thats only at under 17 level, what about the 20s/23s too.

Would you put more of our resources on the u17s or on the later age groups given the close correlation to senior football.

This is what i mean about resources the FFA have got, where to allocate to whom?

As much as its nice to to well at u17 level, its hard to judge players that might play for the senior team one day from there, i would be more concerned at the u20 and u23 level where the results and player selection has been terrible in the last 5 years or so and there is no centre of excellence involved there the players come from the clubs so scouting becomes an important task in those age groups.

Well said.

I think SAP being disseminated in the NPL and soon to the HAL clubs, will create a much greater catchment for the late developers.

Barca 4 life

The same scenario should be adopted for u20/23. A database of all players identified should be kept including overseas players. Camps should be arranged regularly with different scouts brought in to
Asses players development not just leave it up to the coach to decide, so hopefully we eliminate the amini debacle.

Since Craig Moore has left nobody in FFA is monitoring age groups 16 through to 23. Who is keeping track of these players especially the overseas based one? I have said it before all Australian youth coaches their assistants and managers should be traveling Australia and the world monitoring players progress at all time. .

Without a centralized database we only keep monitor the ais boys who I mentioned earlier in a post were picked as 14-15 year olds,
And yes maybe they were the best at the age but as we all know things change dramatically after that time. It's only natural for the ais coaches and TD to push boys they have developed but who is monitoring the others after that age from all over Australia and around the world

I agree with a lot of what you guy's are saying and think the sooner HAL clubs have juniors from u12s to 20's in a full time development program the better. This then will not only in sure that more players are developing but less will be missed. If this then is the case the COE will no longer need to have a program and could then concentrate it's efforts on identification. Only one problem finding the quality coaches required and the HAL clubs finding the money to run these programs.