I just wanted to tip water on the notion you needed 50 professional teams and tens of million spent on academies etc. to be a successful football nation

As you said, Ange does not have a massive quality and glut of players coming through - this is not his area of responsibility either. In fact, I think he has done a remarkable job unearthing or persuading the Socceroos that were previously ignored or underappreciated by the previous management. Some players that Ange brought in that are now established within the first team setup are Sainsbury, Wright, Smith, Luongo and Mooy. His whole mantra has been to set the foundation for further success, that's how far behind the national team setup was the rest of the world. He has expanded the available pool of players, he has begun to stamp his foot down on Asian qualifying (something that could never be said about Verbeek or Osieck) and to top it off, he brought home our first piece of major silverware for the men's side. End of the day, we can only play what is in front of us - that's the nature of confederations, so the only time we get to play top nations in meaningful competition is at the World Cup or, as we will next year, at the Confederations Cup. Bemoaning our lack of success in friendly games is tiresome and utterly ridiculous without the context around them.

Ange has set about to change the culture surrounding the teams and to improve performances over time. It's been what, two years since he took over? We've already climbed back up the rankings, we've won the Asian Cup and we're playing a proactive style of football that is not only going to be successful in the long run, but is finally restoring some belief back into the Socceroos as world beaters. We've just had our number 1 keeper playing in La Liga last season, we've got a smattering of players in the Bundesliga and our captain is a club stalwart in the EPL - contrast this to what we had five years ago and already things have improved.

Ange has got until at least the World Cup in Russia for his contract, but barring an absolute horror show there he should have the job until Qatar 2022 - that's a generation or two of players playing at a World Cup in 'our own backyard'. Nobody will know how to play in the desert better than the AFC teams, and we should be looking to exploit that.

croatia has about 7 teams (i'm being nice) before the
other teams start hitting NPL level

I think that's pretty harsh
there is a continuous drop in quality from team to team through the divisions since it isnt salary capped. But NPL is probably at least 2 divisions lower than the a league. More importantly it isn't professional (not enough fulltime players and coaches) making the npl not the best for youth development

Hahahahahaha... my sides! This line is honestly fantastic. Our biggest trophy as a footballing nation ever, and it was "against mostly weak sides" and "it's just a pass mark". Wowzers, the level of entitlement by some is baffling.

The cold hard truth is that since Ange has come in we've seen the side play and achieve at the best level we've likely ever seen them. We're not just plodding about and occasionally having a good game, we're at the point where people genuinely complain that England are hitting on the counter attack. Ange tinkers in friendlies and is building towards something, and in the one instance since that World Cup (where we still left with our heads held high) that there was silverware on the table, we stood up and did it. We in no way should be calling winning the Asian Cup a pass mark, we're on a continent with Japan, Korea and Iran, three sides which all should and do fancy themselves as the strongest on the continent. We faced off against a UAE side playing out of their skin, with an attack lead by one of the most exciting players in Asia and still come out on top, despite "not having a striker".

Ange has come in with a hard job, of getting us to play the right way, develop what we have and build a side that can do it on the biggest stages, and by all metrics we can currently use, he's not just getting a pass mark, he's doing better than I thought would actually be possible at this point. The real litmus test from here though is the World Cup qualification campaign from this point, and the Confederations Cup in 2017. At this point though I'm impressed by his management.

why? why do we think a club that get 500 people to watch there games, and has a club budge that less then SMFC is better then NPL ? Because Croatia is special magic places ? :p

The use of the hyphens to break up this sentence indicates that I was referring to overall results and not the Asian Cup as being a pass mark, I also put the word 'fantastic' in there. And secondly, do you think that the sides in the Asian Cup Australia faced were not mostly weak?

As for entitlement, I never said preached we should be at any level. I think we are pretty much at it, however we could be jagging more results against better teams, but as others have pointed out we can only play who is in front of us.

To call the sides we faced in our continental competition weak is hugely arrogant. We came out on top in a competition featuring Korea, Iran and Japan, the teams we faced are either them or the ones who knocked them out. To call the competition weak is ridiculous.

- Gone out in the strongest group in a World Cup, but impressed much of the World in the process

- Gotten through to the next round of qualifying

How is Ange meant to fix that we "don't have a striker", if they're all shit?

You can only work with what you have, and I'd rather watch this team play the way we do than watch Verbeek style boredom with better players.

because they are teams with more players played full time above a league with more players who play full time. Our top division is probably on average similar quality to their top division but having a longer season with two divisions (as well as access to europe both being in the federation and having eu passports, which we can't match) and having more academies makes it much better for youth development

if we had all those structures our national team should surpass theirs

Korea beat us in the first time, and we pipped them in the final, and they were the only half decent team we come up against.
None of the best teams in Asia won a single game at the last world cup, so I don't think it's that ridiculous to call second and third tier Asian sides weak. They are not crap, but they clearly do not set the world on fire.
However, I expect Japan and Korea to do better at next World Cup.

I'm not sure we impressed much of the world as much as many like to think. We had some flashes, and especially against Holland, but as we've seen that was the beginning of their slide to now getting beaten by Iceland, USA etc. Let's not forget that they went to penalties in their game against Costa Rica.

When Bangladesh and Tajikistan are in your group, this is bare minimum

not sure if anyone has done a scientific study on the optimal number of games a year to prepare you for international football. However common sense would say that a sign of too few games are
1. being injury prone (same with too many)
2. being mistake prone at a higher rate than would otherwise be expected for your level of technique
3. Not being as positionally aware

These also happen to be the flaws of a league roos (as well as players that haven't been in europe for ages) with the first two not applying much to mooy at the moment

Thought this thread was going to be about a club wanting to poach him... phew..

if you go by a single world cup italy and england are weak

south korea and japan make it out of the group stages every second year and one of them made a semi
given what they are like on paper there success is about right on what you would expect some good wcs, some bad, occasional brilliant
they are both on average over a sustained period as good as our golden gen at their peak

This is all true. But it's doesn't really alter the AFC being weaker (overall) than UEFA, CONMEBOL, CONCACAF and CAF. With the exception of South Korea making the last 4 in Japan/Korea, the AFC has consistently done worse, overall, than those four confederations.

We do need to keep a sense of perspective.

yeah the top of asia is probably equal or slightly weaker than concacaf with the middle and bottom much much stronger and a mile behind south america and europe
Africa is probably slightly stronger than asia and concacaf

This is all true. But it's doesn't really alter the AFC being weaker (overall) than UEFA, CONMEBOL, CONCACAF and CAF. With the exception of South Korea making the last 4 in Japan/Korea, the AFC has consistently done worse, overall, than those four confederations.

We do need to keep a sense of perspective.

perspective? i look forward to watching Iceland play in 24 team Euro Cup...and Northern Ireland

Edited by adrtho: 30/5/2016 11:14:08 PM

yeah the top of asia is probably equal or slightly weaker than concacaf with the middle and bottom much much stronger and a mile behind south america and europe
Africa is probably slightly stronger than asia and concacaf