Again I think you've got to put that result into context, Spain were the number 1 team in the world at the time, Australia being far from it.

Spain were already out of the cup at that point and were angry, australia on the other hand I think were so mentally drained from the previous 2 games that they just couldn't match the feelings Spain had.

So I think the mental side of things played a big role in that match, plus the fact that Spain are clearly a better team.

Are the players drug tested at this age ?

WHy would your resort to drugs when you can just cheat with older players.
All you have to do is avoid using players that are too much older than 17, within about 2 yeare, and you can bone scan them yourselves to see if you can get away with it.

People saying fitness and fatigue is not a factor are just completely deluded fantasy island idiots.
Maybe Vidmar took some payments to take various players along because I certainly think Petratos and to a lesser extent Maskin were much bigger and powerful than any attackers they had , similiar to Bandeira in size and strength. If they had no depth why not take them.

Some views expressed in this discussion don't take into account the calibre of the opposition.

A few years ago, even Arsenal struggle to play effectively against Barca. They had never experienced squeezing and full pressing intensity that Barca applied.

Nigeria are a quality side.

The fact that Australia has made the last 16 of the under 17 WC is not too bad when 184 odd other football playing countries didn't get there at all.

Exactly.

Most other countries play football as their main sport. There is no competition from the likes of union, league, AFL, etc.

Most have bigger populations than Australia too.

Many in Australia have unrealistic expectations about national team performances. Just to qualify for any WC tournament at any level is an achievement.

What is the basis for this, Munrub, based on your football knowledge?

What background do you have in football to make ludicrous statements such as this?

I've previously asked you to define:

1. The significance of playing in diamonds and triangles which you've previously ridiculed?


There are very specific reasons for using them.

You've said you've done coaching courses, why haven't you answered?:roll:


2. You've also ridiculed the likes of various 1v1 evasion techniques.:roll:

It depends on the individual as to what one is comfortable with. Because one finds one difficult another may not.


3. You've also pontificated a wall pass is preferable to pursuing a 1v1 action.

Depending on the scenario a wall pass, or a 1v1 action can be useful, depending on the positioning of one's teammates and the positioning of opposition players.

If I asked you to set out which aspects of coaching players is of paramount importance at which ages, what would you answer?


Technique.

Football conditioning.

Tactical organisation.

Game sense.

Communication.

There are consequences of weighting at different ages.

You are basically an angry, cynical individual, with far more hubris and arrogance than genuine knowledge about football performance. Yet you suggest professional coach educators should change, or even disband practices, or even a national curriculum, based on world's best practices.](*,)

If we are being perfectly honest we only played one decent half against Mexico , which is disappointing. Therefore I don't think focusing on performance is warranted. Look at the constant changing rhetoric from management and coaches prior to the tournament compared to now.

Prior - it was all about we want to play our style, progressive possession based. Hinting that results don't matter but style of play do, this leaving management and coaches a escape clause if they don't progress

Now - it some great results to progress from the group, we played hard competitive football and fought for every inch. All of a sudden results are the main focus point not style because it was clear out style of play was ordinary.

In conclusion management and coaches are taking two bites of the cherry and having a each way bet. Mixed messages , well how do you think these young lads would go with mixed messages .... Very difficult but let's remember for management and coaches is all about having a excuse for the FFA after this tournament and getting their contracts extended for another generation..... Another generation that will be lost unfortunately.

We don't how what players are coming through because we don't have a database, and there in lies our problem these lads will automatically progress to young socceroos even though they haven't been taught correctly and were selected as 14yoldd. The young socceroos coaches will then waste the best part of a year and realize ... We have a problem lets go and quickly look for other players ...... To little to late.
Our problem is we don't know what Aussie players are out there, nor do we evaluate their rate of progression.
ITS PICK AND STICK

5 nil?

I was pretty happy with the individual skills ondispay looking forward to seeing this team develop as well as the next team

in particular looking forward to the generation 2 yrs younger

these are the first to go through the full ntc

it will be interesting to see how our grand experiment turns out. The thesis is that we play in a way that makes results harder at youth level to focus on technique in the early years which is the only years you can learn it. This leads to some sobering results at youth level but if our kpis is our individual skill then there is huge improvement apart from infinishing which is arguably the most important part of technique.

Its hard to stomach bad results as a viewer and no doubt as a player but if the experiment works and it leads to better results at senior level when these players muscle up, get fitter, learn better tactics and positioning which can all be learned later then the results are worth it.

I guess we will know in 10 years whether this approach is best but in the meantime we are meeting all our kpis apart from finishing. So if this is the right path i think we are implementing it well

We need someone like Josep Gombau coaching the u17 anyone less is not giving respect to the players, the nation nor the coaches who have got these players to this stage. These coaches are state inst at best we need and deserve more.IMO

If peter de roo picked this squad then i guarantee they have the skill to be trained by a better coach.

Edited by krones3: 29/10/2015 07:36:31 PM

=d> Well said mate. It's stupid how we think we know this sport. So many things have been browsed over and ignored, especially regarding youth leagues, individual statistics and obvious other stuff overlooked by FFA. Roundball is a funny one cos there are so many levels of development in most of the dutch/german etc teachings. Do you get this with other sports? It's almost like the young guys are expected to leap from U13's str8 to Bundesliga 1 overnight. Specifically, how the fuck could we find players in Australia when none of this structure even exists....

That's a great point about the coaches.

These players have a very sheltered upbringing, they have the same team mates for years and are coached by the same Australian coaches. That means they see the same limited things over and over again and when they face other countries, dont adapt as well as they should.

The FFA should be looking to bring in a couple of foreign coaches who have experience in the European academies.

I don't want to bag the players.I am sure they gave their best.But at youth level, we do have a history in many competitions of collapsing in a heap as a tournament goes on.
We make a final in asia and get well beaten by an asian minnow.Then we hear,but Vietnam went to Arsenal.Then Thailand beats us,but it was too hot,we ran out of steam.More recently France schooled us after we performed well in against Turkey.France well they were too good.There are others too.
The teams and conditions we play change.But the collapse at the final hurdle still happens.
The boys can only do what they are coached to do with the fitness they have been trained to have.If we agree they have talent then what can we conclude?
For me it comes down to training and coaching.It just happens over and over again no matter who the opponent.so what other conclusion can you make?

I thought despite the 6 nil scoreline and going out in the round of 16. It was a mostly positive experience for the team. I think some people are being a bit harsh on the team, the boys would of learned a lot and hopefully they can kick on from here.

This was disgraceful. On so many levels.

Some people believe results don't matter. Well, they should be disappointed with the Joeys performances for the most part.

Others believe results are the be all and end all. They can take some joy in the fact that we progressed to the Rof16 (second last in the group) but got tonked by Germany and Nigeria.

Then the sensible ones believe that the manner in which they play is the most important thing at this age but results are important. To those of us who subscribe to this philosophy, there have been some encouraging signs, but it has overall been rubbish.

There have been some profound improvements, but these need to be kept in context, and the various failings need to be called out.

I watched all but the first fifteen minutes of the match against the Germans. All of the match against Mexico. I missed the match against Argentina. And I watched the last hour of the match against the Nigerians.

The things that I was happy to see- Lucas Derrick might be the real deal. Fantastic 1 vs 1 skills and reasonable positioning. Want to see better passing from him but that will happen when his teammates are in better positions. He needs to go to the Holy Trinity ASAP. Panos Armenakas, while a bit unpolished, has buckets of playmaking ability. I'm not sure he's quick enough for the wing and I think he might be better suited to a CAM role. But either way, it's a good problem to have. The fella is class.

The things I have not been happy to see.

WHY WAS OUR FIRST TOUCH SO CRAP? Against most opposition, most of our players displayed the touch of a rapist. It often went a metre or more ahead of them. Contrast that with Germany and Nigeria. They passed it really hard and fast to each other in tight areas and controlled it beautifully. Why could we not do this? I can think of several players whose first touch was far worse than that seen at amateur level. Isn't this one of the main focuses of the NC?

WHY ARE WE SO SLOW? Against Germany, against Mexico (in the first half) and certainly against Mexico, our players looked like they had lead feet. Why? Why? Why? Why can't be as fast as them? Good teams, and good technical football, requires speed.

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PLAYERS IN OUR SIDE WITH DECENT ATHLETIC ABILITY? Yes, football is about more than athletic ability. Some of the greatest footballers haven't been great athletes. So not every footballer needs to have fantastic athletic ability. However, every successful team needs some players who are great athletes. Every successful team needs a few players with outstanding 1 vs 1 ability in open space. In order to have this, you need to be fast and you need quick feet. True we have Derrick, but not much else. Why do we lack young footballers who are also outstanding athletes? Look at Nigeria and Germany. They have players like Victor Osimhen, Johannes Eggerstein and Felix Passlack. These players were able to run through our players with close control. It was beautiful football. Both the German and Nigerian teams beautifully combine the highest technical standards, tactical astuteness, outstanding athletic ability (speed), the highest levels of fitness and excellent mental strength (belief, tenacity, resilience). Why are our players so behind in these areas?

WHY ARE WE SO UNFIT? Most of these lads train at the AIS. Not all that long ago, the AIS was the best Olympic gold medal factory in the world (given Australia's population). We have some of the best sports scientists in the world. We have some of the best facilities in the world. These kids should each be running at least 15 on the beep test. Anything less is unacceptable. Well, based on how they played (how they ran and kept their focus), I'd be surprised if most of the team were running more than 12 on the beep test.

WHAT IS VIDMAR THINKING IN TERMS OF HIS TEAM SELECTION? Leaving aside issues of European-based players cold-shouldered, why did Daniel Arzani barely play at all? We only saw a few minutes of Arzani against Germany. In that time, he looked to be one of the best Australian players (alongside Derrick and Armenakas). Arzani is super quick, has beautiful close control and he opens up passing lanes. This is what Australia LACKED against our opposition, especially Nigeria. We looked so slow. So why did we leave one of our best players on the bench? And I don't buy into the idea of players only being able to play in one position. When I was playing U15s and U16s, most of our team could play in two or three positions and would do just that.

Our wingers, except for Armenakas, really struggled, and our central players were very average. Why couldn't Armenakas have been played more centrally and Arzani been deployed on the wings. Preferably against Germany onwards, this would have been the correct team selection. But at least against Nigeria.

WHY DO THE FFA HAVE FUCK ALL IDEA ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF EUROPEAN-BASED PLAYERS? The commentator suggested that Vidmar only heard about Thomas Prinsen, who is at the PEC Zwolle academy, because the technical director (or something) of that academy used to work with Adelaide United. This is disgraceful. Why can't some of the money wasted on taking about as many staff as players gallivanting around the planet be spent on employing a top quality scout, based in Europe (hell, he doesn't need to be Australian) to seek out other players in Europe with Australian passports (and they're out there).

Off-topic, but how is that Armenakas has his own wiki, when he hasn't been capped at senior level for club or NT, when Ikonomidis wasn't permitted one on those grounds?

Paladisious?

Exactly. Just because somebody is good at sciences, it doesn't mean they need to be shit at arts.

Being at peak physical fitness and playing technically great football aren't mutually exclusive.

As always in Australia, we create false dichotomies, endlessly. People seem to think it's one or the other. This is bullshit. Just kick arse at both.

Quickflick
Its not about technique being the only thing that matters
its about technique needing to be developed at a young age.
times spent on fitness is less time spent on technique at such a valuable time. But if you do that results get hurt at youth level. Our best team at youth level made the wc final and did nothing at senior level
our last few generations of youth have done poorly at youth world cups and there has been improvement at senior level for both club and country.
The thing is if you develop enough players with acceptable technique it becomes a numbers game.
of those that have acceptable technique a quarter will develop to an acceptable level of physicality
a quarter again will understand the tactical side of the game to an acceptable level
a quarter again will develop the mental strength at an acceptable level
a quarter again will develop well in bpo to go with their bp skills

germany has 5000 youth playing full time and if those fractions i give above are ball park then they produce enough world class players every generation to win a world cup (about 25 or so)

we have 24 full time youth so im not expecting to win a world cup until that changes
in the meantime i see improvement.
ironically today while being our worst result was arguably one of our better performances
nigeria on the other hand may win lots of u17s but wont blow the world away at senior level

thanks for saving me the time to type that, you nailed it.

Basically yeah, more high quality coaches and more players in high quality programs. We shouldn't panic when a nation like germany is streets ahead of us, it should be a given

nothing? :?

Jeez , can't agree with your Armiakas argument , I thought he was the most unfit player in the squad , in fact most times he had the ball he either lost it or gave it away .
Not sure what the Italian primavera is like thes days if he is getting a game .

I agree entirely that, since technique needs to be finetuned at a young age, there needs to be the utmost emphasis on it.

What disappoints me, grazorblade, is that the technique on show wasn't all that impressive (with a couple of notable exceptions), imo. The first touch, a lot of the time, was appalling. The passing went astray.

What also disappoints me is that I don't think that it's too difficult for them to be technically very good, athletically strong (in enough cases) and physically fit in all cases. I think technique can be focused on and those fitness levels be maintained. In fact, I'd argue that if fitness levels aren't high enough, technique can't be good enough.

Decentric refers to skills being the application of technique in match situations (correct me if I'm wrong, Decentric). Well, this entails outstanding first touch, ball control and passing, while running around very, very quickly. To do this, you need the highest levels of fitness. And some players (but not all players) need to be good athletes. If you can't do this, then you're not that technically good, in the first place. This is how technique gets truly tested. Being able to play like that at speed and under pressure. We saw that Germany, Nigeria and Mexico (in the first half) able to do just this. Australia lagged well and truly behind.

We had a few good passages of play in the tournament. That's encouraging. And when Mexico were knackered, we were able to do this (but it shouldn't require them to be exhausted) and even still didn't have the quality to deliver the coup de grâce.

But those other sides had the combination of technique and fitness to do that. We didn't. This is what I find infuriating.

Nigeria mightn't blow the world away at senior level. But don't kid yourself, if we had strikers at U17 level as clinical as theirs. If we had guys as technically competent as they do (and we don't) at U17 level, we'd be fairly thrilled, wouldn't we? :lol:

If Nigeria had the infrastructure, the savoir-faire and the history of sporting tenacity and success of countries like Australia and the States, they'd be a real force to be reckoned with. Even still, Nigeria have reached the Round of 16 at the senior world cup three times. Australia have done this just the once. And the current Nigerian team has players from Chelsea, Lazio, Monaco, among others. We'd love to have that kind of quality.

So, while I agree with you that winning youth tournaments doesn't translate at senior success, there's a reasonable correlation. There are other reasons why Nigeria isn't as good as they should be (reasons we in Australia can be ever so thankful for not having to deal with). In any event, if you do well at these tournaments, it makes it far easier for your youth players to get signed by good clubs in Europe. There's a perception bias which gives them far more chance of gametime and first team football, imo.

There are replays of their game against Brazil on youtube, can you explain in what category they were the best?
It may well have been that because that world cup was in New Zealand that few players wanted to go to it.
The only player I thought looked good technically in the team was McDonald and he was on the bench.

The nuance is that he looked unfit and gave the ball away too easily. But he also showed quality on the ball that was sorely lacking from all our other players, save Derrick.

Risky play will lead to turnovers, but risky play, often, is the only way to breach good defences. It's all about improving positioning, first touch and movement off the ball so that you can pull off the riskier moves. It's preferable simply to passing sideways in midfield. We do need to encourage the type of thing Armenakas does, and he'll become more polished as he goes along. That's where these tournaments are good. We learn how to do that better.

What's the use of having players in HIGH QUALITY PROGRAMS when they won't pick them?.

Sorry , but can't agree , modern day footballers need the full package , speed and application been 2 of the main requirements .

:d That's, more or less, what I said my rant above.

You've misunderstood what I wrote in my last post. Armenakas takes risks. Sometimes they paid off, other times he lost the ball. This doesn't mean he lacks the quality (which other players lack in the first place). It just means he's a work in progress. I agree with you that fitness was a problem for him (and for others) and I wager that, at full fitness, the things he tried would have been more likely to work.

My point is that it's far, far more likely that Armenakas will be the full package (technique, tactics, temperament and fitness) than the others who lack the technique and the talent. So Armenakas needs to be encouraged to play in the free way that he does. Given time, he'll become more refined and won't lose the ball.

Your constant attempts to misrepresent what I have said is becoming very tiresome.