Im a Proud Australian with Croatian decent im super proud of Croatia making the final but it has me thinking Croatia has less money, a much smaller population and talent pool and a average league attendance of 3k 
on top of that 
Croatia has a shambolic FA 

Yet they are in a World cup Final they have a starting 11 of superstars they have the best midfielder in the world in Luka Mordic. 

Has me thinking wtf is wrong with us? why are we copying the dutch when they are shit? what are we doing so wrong? we dont have a single player that would make the Croatian or French squad....

Can anyone shed some light on why? 

Discuss? 

Only thing i can think of is they are in europe we are not 

We can't copy the Croatians next time round because that would just be old sockah now wouldn't it

Let’s introduce AFL to Croatia and they will have the same problem as us.

Yes.

Mate that Croatian team is a gun team that's probably in its golden generation right now, most of the team are playing for either barceolna or Real madrid so that's pretty hard to compete with.

Graham Arnold reckons in his article yesterday its just a mental block thing that we need to get over with our striking problems that we have on hand .
As others have mentioned before though, the players that have gone through the NC are only just starting to come through the ranks so give it time and we can all truly judge whether it's sh*thouse or not

Essentially a smaller population compared to some but they have a strong football pedigree. Their 98 side was outstanding with Zvonimir Boban, Davor Suker and the like and went very close to making the final back then tbh.....

We are just full of excuses. Iceland is the size of Newcastle, Croatia smaller than both Sydney and Melbourne and both show what can be done.

AFL and NRL (and the media) foist on us were “too small” so what does Gallop do? He goes and fights to be #1 code in Australia when he should have been competing with the likes of Iceland and Croatia.

The ffa constantly fight the WRONG battles, it’s a habit now ...

Suker was a f**kn superstar 

(1) 4 million in a football obsessed country vs 24 million in a country where football is 3rd (at best) sport.
(2) Poor local economy makes football an escape route for youngsters.
(3) Free coaching.
(4) Geography helps best players in the country play with/against the best players in the country.
(5) Proximity to the rest of Europe makes it easy for them to travel to better nations.
(6) At international level they play against the best in Europe and the World, most of our games are against poor opposition.

3rd is generous, which of league, afl and cricket has football overtaken (doubt its even taken over rugby as much as I would like it too)

Most important of all - a football culture.

This is why Croatian clubs in the NSL used to produce so many socceroos.

But see this just sounds like excuses to me...

I think we should be doing better with the resources we have especially when you compare Australia with nations like Iceland, Croatia etc I mean Nigeria etc have a better squad then us...

I feel we should be doing better 

there are 300 nations in the world

what are the odds of one of them having a golden generation? Today its iceland tomorrow its some other random country punching way above their weight. 

We will get better... takes time.
You'll see our Aussie youth teams improve which will feed the NT.
Best talent we've ever had at u17 and u19 level. Both boys and girls.

Football is about organic growth and development. The FFA style is very controlled and the opposite of what we need. As with the Croatian NT, the development of players is outside the remit of the controlling FA. That FFA have stymied the development of our players for the last 12 years due to their antagonism against "old soccer" (which, given Lowy was part of it is an absolute joke) has been detrimental to our development. Now that the NPL teams are back in the game, we should have a bright future.

Exactly

Sport is competitive everywhere else in the world. We want to control the results and headlines

What I find most impressive about that win this morning was how calm Croatia were. That match was so tedious until the 68th minute. They were so sloppy, second to most balls but they just calmly stuck to it and they produced. They kept that calm going through to the end. I thought they'd try and get the result in normal time but they were just happy to see the whole thing out, backing themselves to produce again when it mattered even though they were obviously jaded. That's real football pedigree. So impressive today were Croatia.
That wasn't the kamikaze football that Foz seemed to be espousing we play after the Peru match. 

There are plenty of articles on the web discussing this, but the fundamental difference is they have a proper football pyramid, with clear pathways from sub-junior to senior teams. Youth prospects get to play seniors (and I mean play not sitting on the bench)  at an early age and if they show promise the doors open from there to other teams and leagues. Consider Modric was playing in the Croatian 1st div at 18, Mandzukic at 16, and Halilović at 16, to name a few. 

The distinct lack of money in the Croatian league is a major factor as clubs need to develop youth as they cant just spend on marquee's and then there is the potential to make money from transfers. 

Most interestingly, these circumstances were similar back when we had the NSL and it is no surprise we had so many talented players coming through and playing in the major leagues overseas. Just look at the bio's of any of the GG.

Compare that to the franchise league we have now and when teams like Victory prefer to sign 33YO Djubic for 3 game injury cover rather than promoting a youth team player and Roar think a 38YO striker is their best option, it's little wander youth development is stuffed.

If we were to plan, it isn't going to be for the next cycle but in 12 years time... Unfortunately, no one thinks like that.

208 or thereabouts.

Sick of the AFL NRL arguments.  Even if you divided Australia's population by 4 and allocated each quarter to the AFL, the NRL and 'others' you've still got a base population of 6 million people for football.

Tired of the same old shit excuses.  There's plenty of reasons why we're not great but the AFL and NRL stealing the players is not one of them. 

Reality check, Croatia has 130,000 registered football players, Australia has over 1,000,000.

But AFL, but Kulcha, but, but, but, all just excuses,  

Bang on.  So can we PLEASE stop crapping on about the AFL and the NRL.  Or the farking big bash.

THANK YOU!!! 

Finally someone with a rational argument. So many people on here trying to use vague & subjective arguments about proximity to Europe, Football Culture, other codes getting in the way etc. etc. 

At the end of the day, Australia is poor at identifying and then nurturing naturally talented footballers by giving them the environment to thrive. 

Conversely, in Croatia most of their gifted players start plying their trade in 1st division football at the age of 16. 

Aussies, no matter what they bang on about - are just not that great or passionate about sport like other nations. They pretend they are, but it's in a boofhead get blind at the footy mate way. Other countries live for their national teams. 

Go to a wallabies game and you'll see fans in brand new scarfs that they are ready to put back in the cupboard for for 6 months etc. 

Go to the balkans and you have kids playing from dusk until dawn in the streets. It means everything to them

FFS, the one sport we invented - AFL, we are not even good at. peope come fom overseas having never played it and becoime a professional after 1 year. No wonder you get a point for missing. 

Nice subjective opinion with 0 fucking evidence. 

What evidence would you like mr angry?

All posts require evidence now for his royal highness?

We don't have over 1m registered players.  We have just over 600k and over half of them are in 1 state, NSW.  Qld for example has a population of 4.6m but only 80k registered players and Vic has a population of 6m but only 70k registered players.  The 1.1m figure is total players.  The ratio of unregistered to registered players here is approx. 1:1 whereas in most European countries with strong football culture it is higher and its in the 3 to 4:1 range in smaller countries in central Europe.

what sports in the world - with a decent number of countries playing - that Aus dominates in? genuine question