Aside from Australia, two Asian nations won and the other lost due to a freak goal to Brazil, which is a further indictment on Pim's tactics at the World Cup.

West Ham was just one answer.

You have heard of Paul Scholes, David Beckham, The Neville brothers, Nicky Butt, Wes Brown ? All came through the Man Utd Academy.

As for Foz, he is paid to be a pundit on SBS and does a very good job. Witness all you people scrambling for links.

=d> =d> =d> =d> =d>

=d> =d> =d> Agree 100%. With all this panicking, no wonder the FFA are having trouble finging a replacement coach. Must be the toughest Coaching job ever trying to please a country full of experts.

And Les, Okon. Kimon is good too but he was better in the Lion King.

I've been thinking about the good performances of Japan and South Korea too, and it definitely puts our's in perspective. To that you can add NZ's performance. Three different styles, but all better results. It is indeed an interesting comparison.

But I don't agree with your negativity about the youth coming through the A-League.

The difference between Australia and the other Asian Countries in the WC, along with NZ, is belief. NZ's coach did not slag off their local league and has them play an attacking style. Contrast that with Verbeek who is quick to label players as 'absolutely hopeless', demeans the A-League as rubbish and plays the most negative football imaginable. South Korea and Japan also have belief and a positive attitude, and the results have come for them.

In short, Australia's lack of success is due to Verbeek's negativity and his lack of belief that Australia can play attacking football and match it with the best. That sort of attitude produces shitty results, and it's deserving - we deserve the thrashing result we got for hiring a negative clown like Verbeek

From what I can tell, there is a rift in the camp but it is about a few players personalities, nothing whatsoever to do with Pim or his tactics. I think we will hear about this after the World Cup and it will explain a lot but now is not the time to dig it up, it just has to be managed as best as possible. That is what the coach is doing. I am sure that he is best placed to deal with it, not us armchair critics or passionate football analysts and he is dealing with problems that we know nothing about from the outside.

As for Fossie's outburst, well I haven't been able to view it yet but I have read it's content.
I respect his passion & knowledge for Australian football but in this case his heart has overuled his head.

We all know what message it sends when you get the opposition fighting among themselves. Well, it's not a good look & you know that you have got them beaten. Think about international squads that regularly implode, Holland, some of the Balkan states, well do we want that to be us?
Only nutcases sack coaches mid tournament. We are better than that, we need to stick it out & show faith.
After the World Cup is over we can re-assess & learn from our mistakes & make decisions for the future.
I am pretty sure that if another nation did what Fossie advocated then he would look down his nose at them and think they were crackpots.
We picked a coach, let him do his job.

I agree with Fossie though re our players,( other than Moore ). They are good enough to do well there but they simply did not do their jobs properly the other night against Germany. They will bounce back & regroup but the loss was mainly the players fault, not the coach. Forget the last 2 goals, the game was lost at 2 - 0 when Cahill got himself sent off . At that stage there was no point bringing on Kewell or even Kennedy. He brought on our two most mobile players, Holman & Ruka to run & chase & cover ground to make up for only having 10 men.

We only had 3 players that played okay, Emerton was our best. We can't beat Germany playing with 10 men for half a game when we are already 2 - 0 down. Germany played better than any other team so far & they have had months of practice with the Adidas Jabalani balls. Has any other team got their shots on target like the Germans? No.

Germany would have beaten any other team in that game. Other Asian teams have done okay 1st up but who have they played? No-one like Germany, our results will pick up & so will our play. The other Asian teams will drop off when they come up against top quality opposition.

Looks like this is where the problem commenced and we are paying for it now

A coach that can shape what we have now coming through is important. I keep coming back to Troussier. Whoever it is needs to show well at the Asian Cup and qualify us again for Brasil.

The amount of people in the past few days saying, no worries, we'll be better in Brasil 2014 have no idea. They think qualification is automatic, we'll be lucky to qualify with the resurgence of the West Asian teams that is pending.

Let's wait and see how those teams go against the seeded teams in their groups before we start making comparisons. There's a big fucking difference between Germany on the one hand and Slovakia, Greece and Cameroon on the other. Pretty sure it's much easier to have belief against them than the top seeded team. I'd have liked our team to show more spirit and fight too, it was awful, but let's not just lose ourselves in the doom and gloom and hype.

Now North Korea against Brazil. That was impressive. As long as the players can turn it around and show belief against Ghana and Serbia, which they should do, then move on. If they play with fear again and no belief...then fine, we can all blame Pim or whatever.

Verbeek's A-League comments have to be taken in context. He's asked time and time again early on why he doesn't pick A-League players and why he picks someone like say, Josh Kenndey over which ever A-League wonder-boy scored a goal last week. So he answers the question honestly. So the guy's not diplomatic. Whatever. It's not like he's come out, convened a press conference and gone on a rant about how sit the A-League is. And you know what...he was probably right as well. Craig Moore (not a favourite I know) and other returning players have said the same thing (in the print 442 no less) that the intensity in training is way off European standard.

In the last ten years we have qualified for all but two U-17 World Cups, and all but one U-20 World Cups.

Since moving to Asia, however, we have only qualified to one of a potential 4 of these tournaments.