Performances after group stage, UEFA being the best performer so far.

UEFA 5/6 teams made Round of 16, 4/5 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
CONMEBOL 4/5 teams made Round of 16, 2/4 teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
CAF 2/4 teams made Round of 16 , 2/2 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
AFC 3/4 teams made Round of 16, 1/3 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
CONCACAF 2/4 teams made Round of 16, 2/2 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups


Edited by jonomv: 26/10/2015 11:02:48 AM

Fuck a big black duck sideways.

N. Korea scored in the last minute of injury time to snatch a win and make it through meaning we scrape through to the next round by a bee's dick in 4th spot.

So we through! Looks like we will be playing South Korea instead, again a very tough match.


EDIT: Woops its still Nigeria :oops:

Edited by Barca4life: 26/10/2015 11:03:27 AM

We playing Nigeria

Sheesh - football God's are on our side for a change lol

It can only be down to 1 of or both of 2 things
1 their youth development coaching until now has not allowed them to experience this style of play
or
2 Their present coaches are too fearful to fail in favour of development.

or as i said a combination of both

Yep i just seen it, surprised New Zealand beat Paraguay given they gave France a run for their money.

Still well done to the Joeys for qualifying for the second round out of a very tough group. :)

Correct, shows we still need to improve in our coach development.

I guess or assume the FFA will use as feedback when they educate the next gen of coaches and learn what they need to improve further, these kind of games are priceless in our education! =d>

UEFA appears to be doing fine too.

Performances after group stage, UEFA being the best performer so far.

UEFA 5/6 teams made Round of 16, 4/5 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
CONMEBOL 4/5 teams made Round of 16, 2/4 teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
CAF 2/4 teams made Round of 16 , 2/2 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
AFC 3/4 teams made Round of 16, 1/3 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups
CONCACAF 2/4 teams made Round of 16, 2/2 of the teams finished in the top 2 in their groups

Edited by jonomv: 26/10/2015 11:19:45 AM

We're in....

Great to qualify from a tough group, but man that performance was sloppy as hell. Hopefully more a fatigue factor, and a lack of squad rotation by Vidmar. (Does he seriously expect the same boys to play 3 matches in a week?)

The back 4 and DM must have passed the ball directly to the opposition at least 100 times during that match. That's not even an exaggeration. Last half hour was woeful, lucky they couldn't finish. You can't have CB's passing straight to the opposition. That's suicide.

Also too often players decided to take their man on instead of play the sensible sideways/forwards pass. You're hanging on to a 1 goal lead with a few mins to go and our dm thinks he should try and beat 3 opponents in our own half?! He lost the ball twice and both times should have resulted in a goal against us.

I understand it's youth football and they make mistakes but we looked pretty crap, but the Argies also turned the ball over a huge amount. Overall shots were like 28-13 to them? If they had one decent finisher we'd be out.

If we play the same way against Nigeria the score will definitely be in double figures. Most team would have put at least 5-6 past us today.

The team looked to defend well as a unit, ambushing opponents and getting the ball back cheaply, but poor individual errors negated our strong team ethic.

If that was our strongest team, and we'll need to rotate at least 4-5 of those players we better hope our backups can do a good job against Nigeria. Though with the likes of Armenaskas we'd at least have some decent players.

I didn't watch the whole game, but would it be fair to say that in the final match we didn't abandon our philosophy, we just executed it poorly by spraying passes to the opposition?

I'm pretty sure the boys mostly played out from the back and we're trying to play through Argentina mostly, it was just that they were giving the ball away a lot more. But I missed most of the second half so would be keen to see what other's opinions of the match were. Certainly in the first half there were periods where we played beautifully out from the back and generated good chances, that to me says that the team faded possibly in the second half due to fatigue??

Very accurate summation. Thank goodness we capitalised on Argentina being shite.

Again like Grazerblade, its a bit harsh these kids are 16/17 year olds.

No doubt they made mistakes due to nerves and the lack of leadership which was missed when Caletti was subbed off.

Also the Argies are a physical lot, big players who muscled off us especially in the midfield area.

But let's not forget how far these lads have come since the first game, they have improved defensively and have become better with the ball, but they can make a mistake either from a poor decision or execution but still huge improvement.

Too many estimate the difficulty of playing these type of opponents which they are not used to at home or even in Asia.

Fixed:lol: :lol:

Aren't all the teams, at least on paper, composed of 16/17 year olds?

In my defense I don't think I said anthything that is a criticism of the individual players (apologies if I did. I wouldn't want to put that pressure on a kid and it wouldn't be justified either since I think they did a great job) only at the coaching for our u17 and u20 level.

a quick look at wiki it appears we are in principle the youngest team in the group. At this age a few months can make a non trivial difference in ability

It was great having these last two games on TV so I can replay them.:)

Fascinating to have Argentina play like they did. Whereas Mexico used up all the gas in the first half, Argentina played effective and energy efficient man marking throughout out most of the game in BPO.

One phenomenon that constantly comes back to haunt us, is not having friendlies and meaningful games against good teams in the Oz region who are more aggressive in tactics. That is, playing full presses. Most of our opponents in our region play half presses and partial presses and try to hit us on the break.

This has resulted in Australia easily maintaining possession when building up in the defensive half. Then when Oz has to play through a stacked defensive, applicable in many Asian scenarios, it can be difficult in terms of time and space limitations. Conversely, against our three opponents in the World Cup it has been far more difficult building up from the back, but once into midfield there has been more time and space for our attacking players.


Australia won against Argentina, but the best half of football was against Mexico in the second, when they ran out of gas. Oz also maintained some good structured possession in the first half against Argentina. Ironically, Mexico and Argentina played more long , high, straight balls in attack.


On TV I thought Ante Milicic for an assistant Socceroo coach offered very little in the way of tactical insights. Maybe his strength is as a player manager? Compare Ante to Pim in the Asian Cup when he summed up every game in one or two succinct sentences.

I think Tony Vidmar is doing okay with this group. The set piece goal from Hope's assist to the player from FNQ, was excellent coaching on the training track.

Importantly, Australia's technique playing in tight spaces has improved immeasurably from the old days. The handling speed of players is a lot better than it was. The 1v1 attacking skills were pretty decent in a few players too.

I will emphasise this. So many facets of football like conditioning, defensive organisation, communication, insight can improve as one ages.

Technique needs to be acquired before 16. A lot of players make slow technical progress after age 20 compared to the golden age for learning - 9-13. Technically, or in terms of skills, which is technique application, we are far closer to Germany, Mexico and Argentina than we were in the past at age 15-17. We are probably similar quality.


The problem can be a few HAL coaches. Tony Popovic has an excellent technician, Josh McDonald, sitting on the bench. Kenny Lowe also has the skilful Hagi Gligor sitting on the bench too.

Even though WSW have improved as a Proactive football team out of site sight this year, these sorts of coaches rate conditioning and off the ball attributes higher than technical quality, unlike Ange, Muscat, JVS and the AU coaches.





Edited by Decentric: 26/10/2015 02:15:51 PM

It would be interesting to see if NZ beats brazil and Aus beats nigeria. NZ v Aus qtr final on the cards, goes down well with the rugby wc on as well. Hope the ref knows this is a big rivalry game.

I do agree with some of your observations but i must say its a great day when beating Argentina isnt enough.

Nz beat brazil ? wake up to yourself

And that's the good thing. We're progressing as a nation where simply beating sides isn't enough. The way we beat them is just as important.

We scraped through this time, but hopefully next tournament we'll have a deeper squad, better rotations, less reliance on particular players, and a better technician on the sidelines. And with all this hopefully we can be at a stage where we beat Argentina or Mexico by a few goals, and limit their possession and chances too.

i'd like to see some stats as I thought we were totally out possessed, out tackled, and basically out-played for much of this game. So many stray passes, poor decison-making, takimg opponents on when its not on.

We lose, but play well, we don't play to our strengths, we win & get a result without playing well, we get criticised as well, can't win, except we did.

end of this video has some stats of the game. 49% possession, fewer total shots but same amount on target, fewer corners and fewer fouls

[youtube]?v=Nq7i7SY6AKY[/youtube]

Such as?

Thanks for this.


The two stats I'm not clear on according to the icons are the second one down that had Argentina 27 to Oz's 11, and the 4th one down that favoured Argentina 10 to 4.

I think I know what they are but the icons don't make sense to a non-nerd like me.

It is showing our growing maturity as a football nation.

If we had been in a group with opponents, Germany, Mexico and Argentina, we would never have expected to qualify in the past in such a tough group.

I think its 27 shots off target to the joeys 11