RedStarUncle
Senior List
He's not exactly playing at a level and with the quality to be a starter now anyway... I think we'll end up chucking him in the boat of "cap him now" youngsters who end up not being good enough for either country.
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AFLW 2024 - Round 8 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Socceroos World Cup Qualifiers Socceroos V China/Japan
- Thread starter giggler99
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He's not exactly playing at a level and with the quality to be a starter now anyway... I think we'll end up chucking him in the boat of "cap him now" youngsters who end up not being good enough for either country.
- Dec 22, 2009
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Yeah that's my feeling too. He's not worth pursuing until he is starting regularly in Serie A and making an impact. Right now we have Irankunda, Silvera, McGree & Goodwin as pretty talented wide forwards who are performing at a higher level right now.
RedStarUncle
Senior List
Anyone complaining about us shutting up shop against Japan and doing a good job of it, with the current team we have, is absolutely kidding themselves.
I get the idea that if Australia wants to do anything as a football country, we should be wanting to be able to go to Japan and take the game to them and try and score a few goals and boss possession. That's the dream and that's the idea that one day we talk about winning World Cups not just qualifying for them.
Reality is though that Japan has a solid 30 years of proactive improvement and working along a pathway to being probably the best national side outside of Europe and South America. They've stuck to it, build their league into something meaningful, and moved beyond importing talented players and coaches to being able to develop their own.
We on the other hand have meandered through 30 years of here-and-there uncoordinated turmoil and chaos, and our playing talent reflects that. We've got a decent team and one that can play defensively and do it well and if we put it together get to a WC and not look out of place at the tournament. But we're not just magically going to ask Hrustic, Miller, and Velupillay to play like De Bruyne, Gvardiol, and Haaland and suddenly Australia will be the Man City of international football.
Closest we ever got to being at the standard was 2006 when Guus led the Golden Generation that mostly went through the AIS and left to play overseas in their late teens and early twenties, and when Ange was in charge he vaguely found a good balance with an attacking style but barely qualified us for the WC and was driven out by negative fans and media.
Fix the development pathway, and then in 20 years we can talk about the playing style and intent.
I get the idea that if Australia wants to do anything as a football country, we should be wanting to be able to go to Japan and take the game to them and try and score a few goals and boss possession. That's the dream and that's the idea that one day we talk about winning World Cups not just qualifying for them.
Reality is though that Japan has a solid 30 years of proactive improvement and working along a pathway to being probably the best national side outside of Europe and South America. They've stuck to it, build their league into something meaningful, and moved beyond importing talented players and coaches to being able to develop their own.
We on the other hand have meandered through 30 years of here-and-there uncoordinated turmoil and chaos, and our playing talent reflects that. We've got a decent team and one that can play defensively and do it well and if we put it together get to a WC and not look out of place at the tournament. But we're not just magically going to ask Hrustic, Miller, and Velupillay to play like De Bruyne, Gvardiol, and Haaland and suddenly Australia will be the Man City of international football.
Closest we ever got to being at the standard was 2006 when Guus led the Golden Generation that mostly went through the AIS and left to play overseas in their late teens and early twenties, and when Ange was in charge he vaguely found a good balance with an attacking style but barely qualified us for the WC and was driven out by negative fans and media.
Fix the development pathway, and then in 20 years we can talk about the playing style and intent.
- May 20, 2014
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It was a great result. Combined with the Saudis draw it has basically reset the qualifiers to the beginning. Going in we would be aiming to beat the Saudis at home, draw away, finish 2nd. Back on track to be able to do that now.
RedStarUncle
Senior List
The hope will be to beat the Saudis in Melbourne and get some momentum up to roll through the Bahrain, Indonesia, and China games in November and March.
They should all be winnable, and would probably put us in a position to maybe only need a draw from the final games in June (Japan-home and Saudis-away) which we'd hate to go into needing 3 or 4 points making them effectively playoffs.
