Josh, I am a fan of yours but despite you trying your best you have not played well for the past few months. Now you may have been injured, I heard reports that you had a back problem, fair enough.
But had you been able to play better in the lead up games & no doubt in training also then I am sure that Pim would have started with you in the Germany game.
The fact is that you are a one trick pony, that trick is you are tall & good in the air. Unfortunately for you the German centrebacks are also tall & good in the air, this cancelled your advantage out.

Pim needed someone more mobile than you were at that stage, to run & hassle & pressure the German defence so they couldn't build up play from the back easily. For this reason I believe Pim played Garcia up front, with Tim behind.
Culina was moved over to the left because Chippers had bad games against USA & Denmark. Culina was there to help Chippers to deal with the speedy & skilful Lamm.
Bresciano came good later in the tournament but he is not much cover for Chippers defensively against Lamm, also he was underdone & performed rather ordinary in the three warm up games.
( Our other left back, Carney. As we saw in the Serbia game, Carney is not much defensively. Against Krasic he looked like he had won a competition to play in a World Cup game with the Socceroos. I noticed afterwards that he had his back or ribs strapped & so it seems like he was carrying an injury into that game).

So Pim played with the cards he had chosen. Those cards were his choice & his responsibility. But to be honest he did not have have the same luxuries of Guus. Guus had most of the same players 4 years quicker etc, he also had Viduka, Skoko, Lazaridis, Aloisi. Pim's top players were older & injured or out of form & rusty. Only Cahill & Schwarzer had improved.

Pim's papering over the cracks worked for about the first ten minutes & we attacked them until everyone in defence including Schwarzer & midfield were found to be either asleep or suffering from stage fright.
Except for Emerton, Valeri & Wilkshire.

Kewell obviously wasn't ready to play a full game & Josh wasn't up to playing a pressing game at the front, at that stage of the tournament, due to injuries.

Two goals down, Cahill got himself sent off with an hour to go.
No sense bringing Harry on now as originally planned. He would have to race around & work even harder, it was too risky. So Pim does the wise thing & brings on our two fastest, most mobile players, Holman & Ruka to try & get 10 men to cover the same area as 11 men.
Keep Harry now in cotton wool for the Ghana & Serbia games.
End result 4 - 0.

Craig Foster says to attack & play for the shirt but he does not say what moves he would have made (even with hindsight ) for the Germany game or what players & positions he would have used or even what Pim should have done because Fossie can't. It is much easier to blame the foreigner that is leaving soon than to admit our players, who we can't swap easily, let themselves down.
It is just a vague statement that he would have attacked them. With what Fossie? Who? Where?

Don't forget, our players at the start of the tournament were not all ready to go & perform at the same level they did for the Serbia game, despite the best efforts of our medical & fitness staff.

Yes, those players can play really well, but only under certain circumstances. Pim had much less margin for error than Guus because of the state of the players fitness & form.

Also it was a tougher group than four years earlier as we didn't have a Japan equivalent.
Had we played Ghana first, Serbia second then Germany in the third game we would have had our best result & performed much better against Germany with the same squad of players & got a result.
We also played Serbia with 11 players including one of our star players Cahill for the entire game, first time in the tournament. Don't underestimate the importance of that.




Edited by Damo Baresi: 26/6/2010 06:52:55 PM