Socceroos Just Awful

We had little preparation, the ground was like a cow paddock, the heat/humidity was unbearable, the referee was appalling. These are just some of the excuses that are routinely bandied around for Australian teams when they fail to deliver since we have moved to the Asian Confederation.

However on Thursday, we were at home, with a team that had a full four days together, on a pitch that was like carpet, in weather conditions that were perfect for football and had a referee that put in a faultless performance (Matthew Breeze take note). Yet how did we go? I would suggest this was the worst performance by the Socceroos in the last 6 years (you have to go back to the loss to New Zealand in 2002 to find such a poor performance).

It is difficult to find a player on Thursday that preformed anywhere near expectations. In defence you can make the argument that Roddy Vargas perform OK but Craig Moore had a night to forget. Daniel Mullen’s inexperience was exposed and resulted in a goal and Matt Thompson was simply dreadful. The full backs put absolutely no pressure on the Kuwaiti’s and allowed them to run us around as they sat back.

In the midfield it was an even worse story. Paul Reid looked lost out there, he struggled to hit a pass all night and in the second half seemed almost to be trying to turn the ball over. It was almost a relief when he was replaced. Matt McKay ran around a lot but his final ball into the box was so poor it was embarrassing. The two wide players in Pondeljak and Zullo did get themselves into some good positions but time and time again either their first touch or their crossing let themselves and the team down.

Archie Thompson and Matt Simon will most likely cop a lot of criticism but to be honest when you have 5 defenders sitting on you what you need the most is good delivery to your feet. Both tried hard and although they should wear some of the criticisms the service just wasn’t there.

The biggest concern was the Australian inability to hold possession of the ball under tight pressure. Time and time again we gave the ball up to the Kuwaiti’s. At international level players must be able to keep possession or they simply shouldn’t be given a national shirt.

I know some will say I am being too hard but when a country ranked so far below you controls the ball better and moves that ball a round the field with more confidence then you, something is wrong. Thursday showed just how far the A-league has to go before being able to provide a realistic competition to develop our players.

Most of the media are giving Kuwait a lot of the credit but in truth their performance had more to do with Australia’s lack of ability to hold the ball. They would be flying home today hardly believing their good fortune.

The most outstanding performance was from the referee. Masoud Moradi from Iran gave an absolutely masterclass performance last night. . His control of the game and ability to be in position to make the right call every time was simply a eye opener and put an exclamation mark on just how bad Matthew Breeze was in the final last week. Are we allowed to import referees? Because Moradi would be my first choice.

Overall Pim, although disappointed by the performance, must be feeling a little vindicated today. His comments on the A-league were spot on and if people cannot see why he is concerned about Culina returning from Thursday’s performance then people have their head in the sand. The League simply is not at a standard that is keeping and developing our players to a level that allows them to compete at the international level.

Hopefully now we will see players like Kennedy, Burns, Djite, Stefanutto, Beauchamp, Carle asked to return for some of these matches. A sprinkling of European players would go a long way to seeing a significant improvement.

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