Tough Times Ahead For Olyroos

Depending on how you look at it the Olyroos have been either given a fantastic draw or a nightmare one. On the one side the young roos will face some fantastic teams and will be given an opportunity to showcase their talents to the world. On the negative side there is no easy games in their group and to progress out of the group stage will require that every player brings their best to China in August.

Australia has drawn Argentina, Serbia and Ivory Coast as their opponents for the group stage.

Argentina
Will be favourites to top the group. Although their qualifying campaign was not overly impressive (Finishing second to Brazil in the final qualifying and only scraping past Uruguay with an extra two draws) we can expect them to bring a very strong team. They have confirmed that Juan Roman Riquelme (Boca Juniors) and Javier Mascherano (Liverpool) will be included as over age players and Lionel Messi (Barcelona) is eligible as he is under 23.

Serbia
At first glance many non football people are going to feel that Australia should ease past Serbia with little problem. They are in for a huge shock. This team was the standout at the UEFA Under 21 qualifying tournament. Topping their initial group (which included England) with solid wins against Italy and Czech Republic. In the knockout finals they were too strong for Belgium and finally succumbed to Netherlands in the final. Most of the names will not be familiar to Australia audiences but there is no doubting the quality of the clubs they come from. Players like Zdravko Kuzmananovic (Fiorentina), FiorentinaZdravko Kuzmanovic Zdravko Kuzmanovic Zdravko Kuzmanovic Zdravko Kuzmanovic Gojko Kačar (Hertha Berlin), Milan Smiljanić (Espanyol), Slobodan Rajković (Chelsea) will bring a quality that will surprise many.

Côte d'Ivoire
The last game of the group stages will be against the Ivory Coast and should be highly entertaining. The elephants have confirmed that they will be bringing Didier Drogba (Chelsea) as an over age player which will mean huge headaches for Adrian Leijer and Mark Milligan. The elephants won through the qualifying stages with ease winning 5 of their six matches (the one loss was a dead rubber against Senegal).


It certainly seems that Australia will face a uphill battle to win a game let alone progress past the group stages but Arnold will have to his advantage a large number of lead in games with the vast majority of the squad. This should help bind the team together.

Australia over age players will be a critical choice as it should help bolster the team while not upsetting the balance. Personally I favour a combination of attack and defence. My choices would be Valeri, Carle and MacDonald used in a 4-4-2 Diamond There are of course many options though depending on the setup that Arnold wants to use. I feel an experienced strike partner for Bruce Djite is critical, as I suspect the lone striker formation we played with in the qualifiers will not be as successful against much stronger opposition.