And Federici, Zullo, Oar, Spiranovic, Galekovic and a bucketload of others

Chippers may be 35, but he's greased lightning. Doesn't look like he's lost much pace yet.

Our defence is the most huge cause for concern. With Moore and Chippers both 35yrs and Neill a couple of years behind, we will get caught by a fast front line. If the opposition has a fast midfield or striker duo, we will have major headaches during counter-attacks and clever build-ups. I hope we can get Carney and Beauchamp to figure more in the group stages because I don't think our first team defence against the US will hold Germany or any team in our Group scoreless.

Verbeek like his interviewing style tells it as it is. He has a view that we can surprise in this World Cup but that's all. I've got this negative feeling that we will finish stone cold last in our Group and that will be surprising to some. Verbeek is such a conservative coach but he is incented to get results and qualify for the World Cup. It was just unfortunate that he didn't have such a high opinion of local talent and I think we're too thin on the ground with the attacking talents we brought to Africa.

Verbeek's selected over 100 players since he started. What do you want him to do? Pull another Harry or Mark out of a magic hat? If the talents not there, its not there. The fault lies with the development and talent identification or lack thereof of the juniors.

BTW Vidosic, Williams, Jedinak all debuted under Verbeek.

An embarrassing loss against a nation we consider our equals. Good to see he's aiming the right direction.

He's right, we do need to improve, lets start with the decapitation of the coach. A headless chicken can take over and do a better job.

Yes but the valiant are oft cannon fodder.

Surely you arent saying Pim is doing a good job? It's looking like the charge of the light brigade from here mate. [-o<

=d> Yee Gads man. I think you might be onto something. Next you'll be telling us that the earth is round and May comes after April.


Pim = Baldrick. I'm sure tonight he's ringing Frank L to say, "Iv'e got a cunning plan".

Not and excuse by any means but it interesting that the Jabulani is hard for keepers to handle, and difficult for players to read in flight...

Australia's main strengths: Schwarzer in goals, and Kennedy and Cahill's aerial ability....

Bugger.

Hey all Hearts
.....Negativity is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing......"Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once."
Apologies to Mr Shakespeare

all i can say is a repeat of what i have said many times before our forward line isnt our biggest problem cos we never bar viduca had a striker that coul actually score goals for us . Our problem is our def and mid field ,moore to slow and absolutley lost ,neil strong able but to slow ,chippers gun, wilko always out of pos, grella frustrated with himself, culina not bad, bresh turns over posesion to much , cahill cant do it himself ,garcia lost but quick, kennedy no control ,cant hold up the ball ,cant shoot for shit, and thats right we have him there as an arial threat but cant even head into open goals ,everyone else pim thinks arent good enough to start but on occasion have out peformed our starters. all i can say is i am an aussie supporter to the last whistle and im 95 percent certain it will be after the gahna game . Pim is the one and only person to blame for this . oh yes and the FFA for selecting him as coach............

Pim might be a high level coach, but he has no development skills. He has not blooded one new player to this 1st team.
I bet if Viduka was still around eating 10 pies a day and walking not running he would be in the team right now.
The next coach better have some skills at blooding new players.

I am concerned that some of the fringe players i.e. Valeri and Jedi, have overtaken the tried and tested, but Pim may not realise this until after the World Cup, or not at all....

Hey Heineken
On your post you said in reference to the Socceroos
"....may as well drop our pants, bend over and spread our cheeks."
Please confine the activities that you regularly practice to yourself and not propose that the Socceroos should involve themselves in the abominable act of buggary.

he means he's been vindicated in his belief that playing defensively is the best this squad can do.

Unfortunately last night's game was disappointing. Not just the result ( which we were lucky wasn't 4 - 1, 5 - 2 or 6 - 3 ) but also the performance. Tim Cahill has been off the boil since the EPL season finished for some reason, he will come good. Garcia tried but gave us nothing, Moore was caught out badly several times, Culina doesn't do it as an attacking midfielder any more, Grella wasn't his usual safe self, Bresciano did nothing, Kennedy & Schwarzer looked lost. Kennedy was particularly disappointing, though I suspect it was due to couple of reasons. Schwarzer looks scared to come off his line for crosses & corners.

Reasons for the above - I think the Jubalani balls in altitude, the chopped up pitch surface & general tiredness from training, combined with rustiness of some of our players who haven't been playing recently are all contributing factors.

Craig Moore should be the back up defender, not starting centre back FFS.

Adidas have some answering to do because nobody wants to watch experienced international players who can't manage to pass the ball properly to a team mate or get a reasonable number of their shots on target. It could ruin the World Cup as a spectacle, I hope it doesn't for football fans all over the world. We want to marvel at the players skill, not throw things at out televisions.

All of the above made it one of the most frustrating matches I have sat through in recent times.

Well said. The squad selection, formation, and in game adjustments are the managers responsibility. Its every fans duty to put the heat on the manager when he royally screws up.

In that case maybe you should stick to reading the articles and not the comments. Forums are for the free exchange of information and ideas. Also I didn't realise you needed to attach your resume to your user profile.

I think most fans are frustrated that the Aust team has potential that our tactical 'system' doesn't allow to be realised. Lets face it, USA knew exactly how we would play before the first ball was kicked and then went about giving Pim a lesson in tactical adaptability. If Pim cops some flak from fans for that then good. Hopefully he'll read the comments himself.

I am getting tired of reading comments by people who have never been coaches or referees, I doubt any of them would do any better. We are an OK side and that is OK. We will not win the world cup but neither will Mexico, Slovenia,Japan or Honduras, does this make them rubbish teams? of course not, Australia is playing at about the level I expect of them. Denmark have renewed Olsens contract for getting them too the WC unlike 200 others who didn't, Denmark know their level and are happy with it, as should we be.

See the thing is???? we dont have the players to play beautiful one-touch, attacking football, we are not Spain or Brazil, also Pim inst Guus, jezz these people!!!

Pretty much, maybe I'm expecting too much, but that was dead-set painful. They thrashed us, but the scoreline was more 'solid win'.

I hope Emerton makes a miracle recovery by kick off for Germany, Garcia is trying, but he never looks threatening.

I don't care about the result, but the performance was awful.

Grella was very ordinary all game. Valeri should come in for him.

And Garcia was very innefective as well. Vidosic in for him.

pim has been in charge for so long yet we still havnt reached our peak and the world cup is less than a week away.

wtf have you been doing all this time.

Gettin sick of all this altitude bullshit. What a piss poor excuse.

I thought the influence of the Dutch was meant to improve our quality of football:?,
The way we are playing is quite the opposite

Grella & Moore, more so Moore. Should not have been picked. Grella due to injury and Moore, no playing regular Football at a club level. Was this not one of the previsos from Pim as to picking players.

Grella makes the takles he does because he is not match fit. Or just not fit.

Still, I hope Pim is right and I am wrong.

It was a bloody awful game. to say we played utter shithouse would be the understatement of the week. It was a shocking performance, and if alarm bells arn't sounding them we're truely fucked, cause if we play like that against the likes of germany and Serbia, we may as well drop our pants, bend over and spread our cheeks. Despite the fact Germany have lost some good players, they still have a bloody good squad and i can see people on this forum are still underestimating them cause they've lost the likes of Ballack. It's gonna be a trout-slap in the face for a few people if we do lose against Germany, and if we play against them like we did the U.S then it's gonna take a miracle to save us.

and the first people to start complaining will be those who have sat back and said "it's only a friendly, don't worry about it". It wouldnt matter too much if the world cup was a handful of months down the track, next year even, however wake up and smell the coffee people, the world cup starts next week, pim has less then 7 days to fix the problems. He's shown he's not really willing to change the squad that much, so it's going to be interesting to see how we go.

Too me the biggest concerns are Grella and Moore both are in poor form, Beachamp should have been given some time on the park. I fear Grella will get sent off in the WC.

If Pim's unimpressed with our preparation, maybe he should address his concerns to the coach ... oh ... he is the coach

Agreed. Grinding out results in asia is a much different kettle of fish to getting through your group stage at a WC.

I really hope the FFA do their homework when selecting our next manager. Hopefully they'll get a manager that uses a style based on the players he has at the helm rather than a manager that has his own style and moulds the team around it.

I remember watching Aus play Holland in Sydney and the atmosphere was eerily silent. Pim has the team are playing terrible football and the old excuse that its "pragmatic, results-driven and effective" football has gone out the window. The fact is that its shit football and Schwarzer cant save us every time.