You are both arguing different things and you are both right.

I guess maybe that some of these players wouldn't have birth certificates, so their FA could get some that say they are a couple of years younger then they are. Countries have been caught out doing it before

But having said that, even if some of these players are 20, they are still very good footballers

Innocent until proved guilty.

Not everybody has a birth certificate or has the correct birth certificate. Not their fault. If they say they're whatever age and the scan attests to that then the onus is on the person claiming they're not that age to prove it.

Besides the Nigerians looked about 16 or 17 to me (not that I'm a good judge) so cannot see what the fuss and sour grapes are about.

Quickflick

there is no doubt that a fitter player will have their technique shine through an thatsprecisely what we hope will happen within a 6 to 12 month period when they get minutes for an a league club consistently.
But there is a difference between pure fitness training and technical training.
Pure fitness training involves not having a ball up your feet - sand dunes beep tests etc
all fitness training requires a ball at a players feet by definition.
it is possible to build up some level of fitness with technique building training - a lot of the time you are running in small sided games. But ultimately optimizing for technique will sacrifice fitness levels.
As i said in another post even a small amount of pure fitness training can amount to an entire year less of development during the golden age of learning. Time that can never be recovered.

Agree with this statement. Finishing isnt improving while other areas of the game are.

Benjamin in another thread highlighted power as a problem to and this seemed plausible.
power is diagonal long balls to the feet and the speed of passes along the ground to the feet.
vietnamese youth have incredible power and finishing since they have opened their arsenal academy. The ball is moving through their team much faster than ours from what i saw. They had great finishing too and out classed us. These are plausible areas to improve.
as for tactics i think we produce tactically strong players at senior level so not worried about that
as for organization this i think can wait till senior level but only wsw seem to be able to be organized to a world class level. Not sure why
I hope the ffa look at the first two areas highlighted. Personally im not sure how to improve these areas. As a country we are definitely still learning

Some people will push harder playing small sided games than in fitness training, you can't generalise.
If someone is lazy in a game and walking a round then getting them to jog or climb a sand hill means they get fitter.
The other issue if a player is older your better putting them on low impact fitness training

Congratulations age cheats. 2 nil victors.

Fozz and Genc offering their thoughts on the failings of the COE and the FFA curriculum.

Heresy!

They mention about the level of coaching and most importantly the level of opposition they receive, Fozz was quite quiet in the end there is a rumour he might be involved with the national youth set up soon.

But fair play to Nigeria, no shame losing to them they are a class act above the rest of the pack.

Many of these young African players go to European clubs from quite a young age and receive their training in the European club system. That would be the case with under 19's. At under 17 level they presumably are products of local clubs and systems- but are desperately trying to attract the attention of European scouts and agents.

Edited by localstar: 9/11/2015 11:48:32 AM

Moral of the story : if you have a talented 5 or 6 yr old move to Mali or Nigeria asap , forget the COE , NC, SAP or any amount of acronyms that make up Aus football ....... Just get outta here :)

For one or two people who've perplexingly indulged in Shadenfreude about what they deem to be inadequate performances by the Australian Under 17s, I've caught up with one of the FFA SAP curriculum writers in the last few days. He is one of the top youth coaches in the country.

The Under 17s who just played this tournament have only had 1 year of SAP coaching, before their NTC programs.

The next cohort who've just played the Asian matches have only had 1 or 2 years, depending on the state they live in.

The idea is for player to have 4 years of SAP, 1 year of Skilleroos, before they are eligible for the NTC programs.

So in all probability, the players now , even though they've improved on what we've had before, will be much better when they've had 4 years of SAP, 1 year of Skilleroos, then enter the NTC programs.



Edited by Decentric: 9/11/2015 11:35:07 PM

We are questioning the ability of the coaches and staff not the players and not even peter de roo.

If the coaches aren't winning then time for something new. I've seen a lot of unsuccessful coaches for the youth teams. Ange was one of them, maybe they need a gig at A-League level before they go coaching the younger guys cos they seriously don't have any balls

I have an Idea
Why dont we ask the coach in detail how he wants his players to play and what style and his personal philosophy on football. then just sit back and judge if he did that or not.
Wow that would be a new idea.:-k
beats blaming everything and everyone else. age cheats for fxxx sakes

Well i guess its put into some perspective then, in fact also not every kid in that team has gone through that phase in their development at most 6 or 7 players in that squad have gone through the SAP coaching which funny enough actually doesnt reflect on the NC given the players have come from many different pathways throughout the country and overseas.

At least every NPL and soon to be a-league club will have a SAP licence so almost every kid will have experienced this type of coaching which is crucial.

But this still doesnt stop discussing the flaws of the team and players ability in terms of their game intelligence and still need to improve technically, but we are least improving slowly but surely.

Given we have made huge changes in the last 6 years its not too bad.



Edited by Barca4life: 10/11/2015 12:13:42 AM

They will say they follow the NC philosophy. ;)

The arguments advanced are that there is a problem because they have not been dominant against what - some of the best teams in the world. I've said this before, but where were the European powerhouses at the end of this tournament?


Where were Germany, Italy, England, Portugal, France, Spain and Holland?

In fact where were Belgium?

I can't remember the results but this team (I think, unless it was the younger under 17 cohort?) played two close games against the USA and England not too long ago that were streamed via the US Soccer Federation. The English team were supposedly European champs or runners up to Holland at the time.

This is what the SAP curriculum writer was emphatic about.

What pleased him, since the days of Kewell, he has rarely seen any Oz underage players beat players 1v1 in attacking duels. The fact Derrick and Armenakas were doing this, was an improvement.





Edited by Decentric: 10/11/2015 12:24:35 AM

The interesting part of this squad is not many of these players have actually gone through the NC steps especially crucially with SAP not sure with Derrick but not Armenakas.

With the next batch i expect to see a sharp increase in players that have gone through SAP.

But when comparing with the world's best we still have got some work to do, especially whening identifying and solving football problems that's the big thing i have learned when comparing ourselves to the world's best teams.

Edited by Barca4life: 10/11/2015 12:32:13 AM

There has been an inclination to appoint former pros, recently retired, and very young in terms of coaching careers, to supplant the likes of Ron Smith, Raul Blanco and Les Scheinflug.



Another discussion that took place was that some players were played out of position. This action occurred because it was considered more beneficial for the greater good of Oz football than playing players more suited to the position that could've effected more favourable results.

Mmmm, I think you will find that Josh Laws was the only player that was played out of position and that was because we were hammered by Germany in the first game , a game where our CBs were all over the place and totally out played .

I know Perry Fotakopoulos was played out of position in the first game. Vidmar keeps playing him as a 3/4 (even before the tournament) but his more of a 8 or 10. Funnily enough, he didn't play there again in the tournament.

The tall left back was another. I've forgotten his name, but it is on the tip of my tongue.

When I commented that his attacking play appeared superior to his defensive play, apparently he is a converted left winger.

Way to much emphasis on the 1v1 players the 11, 7, 10 they will always find it difficult to compete at a World level.

Our World Class opponents have too many players much more advanced for various reasons.

As an example most of our top level juniors playing the 7 and 11 positions are way down the pecking order in terms of ability or capability.

SAP programs are not enough to develop these players to world level on its own, I put this down purely to cultural issues including economic.

Where we can compete is tactically (and we are still to come to grips with an "effective" possession game) and culturally (we still produce quality players in certain roles Goal keepers, Centre backs, some midfielders and centre forwards).
The athletic nature (physically and mentally)of the Australian player is still our key advantage.

I will finish with this, watch our forwards and midfielders at all levels observe how many times they receive a ball with a defender behind them and just turn with the ball straight into the defender and lose the ball. At the same time they have passing options that will lead to a bounce pass, a one two or switch of play to unbalance the opposition. Yet they choose to turn into the defender.
The first goal we conceded gainst Nigeria was a direct consequence of a number 7 player turning into the defender with an unecessary skill move into less space (towards the byline away from the central pitch areas where we had dominant numbers) while having 5 passing options.

Yet the commentators blame the defender for pushing up to high.

There is a need to change the way we look at the game.

Great post Arthur.

Away you go Decentric.

Arthur has pretty much repeated what I (and many other posters ) have said over and over.

I know you value his opinion over mine so I'm looking forward to you getting stuck into him for his "excoriation" of the FFA NC.

At senior level players like Milligan usually get this right in terms of decision-making. There are less mistakes per se at senior level of football, even though the current senior Socceroos are not products, technically, of the new FFA system. Tactically they are.

The mistakes, if they can be termed that, in the Under 17s, are the product of playing teams at a higher level than the Oz team was used to.

One premise held by the naysayers, is that because Australia could not execute its game plans effectively against the higher ranking teams in the world, that it is folly to attempt to play like we do. What football boffins have found conclusively, is that all world powerhouses play in a similar way to achieve success at senior level. The consequence of this, is that there is not any other way Australia can make ground relative to other nations by pursuing another path.

Also, coming out of FFA is that because the possession game is now so well entrenched in Australia, at the better levels of football in Australia, teams don't have to defend against the tactics adopted by much of our Asian opposition in international games. At the same time we are becoming better at build ups from penalty box to penalty box.


To achieve a greater level of efficacy at international football in terms of results, it could arguably lead to more success at underage levels by the keeper hoofing it forward at all times, like the past. Ditto the back four. Nevertheless, in terms of building a football playing style that is conducive to long term success, it would probably be counterproductive .

At senior level, one sees far less mistakes as players develop as pros play football day in and day out. The younger players learn by making mistakes. The FFA Technical Department also has more scope to improve from viewing where tactics, or playing style breaks down against higher quality opponents.

Have to disagree with this, Arthur.:)

This has been a historical weakness highlighted by the FIFA Technical Department of Oz performances at all levels in the past in international tournaments.

The difference is active coaching on the training track to transform technical 1v1 qualities to convert them to a skill. Converting technique to skill means being able to apply them in match contexts, like Armenekas and Derrick did in this World Cup.

I know from coaching that coaches of older players thought this would be done by coaches for players at earlier years, or the coaches of juniors thought coaches at youth and senior level would address this. Meanwhile few did. I know this from experience with state youth , NTC and NPL coaches.

The likes of Coerver programs equipped players with technique, as opposed to skill.




Edited by Decentric: 10/11/2015 10:16:09 AM

There is a massive difference between you and Arthur.

I know him off forum. He is a constructive, helpful guy with a prominent role in Oz football. His football insights are well received on 442. He usually adds breadth to any discussion.