I’d been having a running joke with a few people that the Socceroo’s Asian Cup campaign had been following a worringly similar path to England’s performances at, well, any tournament they’ve qualified since 1990 really and what had been so refreshing about my adopted country’s national football team (understated belief, humility, the ability to punch above their weight etc) was rapidly blurring into an all too familiar emotional roller coaster of false hype, broken promises and ultimate failure.
Going into the tournaments as one of the favoured teams based predominantly on reputation and a star studded squad of some of Europe’s elite footballers. The media naturally got on board and built the hype fuelled by all the quotes you could wish for from coach and players and the public have got caught up in the this pre tournament…why wouldn’t they? You can't really blame the media after all whose quotes were they reporting?
But then comes the real crunch…performing on the pitch…and again there were eerie parellels with the England team at the last World Cup…a belief that reputation alone can win football matches…the hope that a coach with no real “plan B’ or worse still much of a "plan A" can win a major football tournament…and an apparent refusal to believe that so called “lesser” footballing nations can’t come back and bite you firmly on the derriere….until they do.
I texted my mate during the first half and said “all that needs to happen is to get a stupid red card, play out of their skin with 10 men and go out on penalties” to complete the story…and lo and behold…we all know what happened next.
Let’s get the gripes out of the way first…..it was absolutely not a red card in my view…possibly a yellow for a petulant flick of the hand…but in my mind there has to be a deliberate and seperate movement of an elbow removed from the natural raising of a players arms to gain elevation for it to be a straight red…HOWEVER…referees have TV sets also and is it possible the referee saw Vincenzo’s late elbow to the ribs which went unpunished in the group stages and assumed the worst? The Socceroos didn’t seem to get much from the referee all night with it taking around 42 minutes before Aloisi or Viduka got a foul in their favour and I’ve watched most games and seen far worse “simulation” go unpunished….what are the odds of Australia getting two yellow cards for diving in the same game? It would be a dull world if the conspiracy theorists didn’t have anything to get their teeth into wouldn’t it?!
But to dwell only on the Japan game would do us no favours at all. The critical thing is that we look at the performances as a whole across the tournament (both our own and our new rivals) and not just on the admirable efforts of the ten men who produced a gargantuan effort to hold a Japanese team superior in numbers. England have made this mistake previously and focused on the “glorious exit” and failed to learn many of the lessons they could and should have learned along the way only to fail in excatly the same way at the next tournament.
The fact is that Australia’s Asian Cup campaign resulted in one win against a team ranked 50 places lower than them in the World Rankings even though they were outplayed for large parts of that game….they drew with Oman luckily when the Omanis should have been out of sight over the 90 minutes….they were made to look ordinary by Iraq and whilst they showed great character against Japan I don’t think anyone could say they deserved to win the game and spent the whole of extra time playing for penalties. The fact is that an acceptable group stage level of performance would have meant lining up in Bangkok against Vietnam and avoiding Japan until the final…but let’s hope now we can learn to stop thinking about finals until after a semi final has been won.
I wrote in my blog prior to the tournament questioning whether Australia winning the tournament was necessarily a good thing…as I wrote that I didn’t think it would quite the wake up call it proved to be! Many lessons will hopefully be learned on and off the pitch by players, coaching staff and supporters alike to ensure that everyone is better prepared the next time we go into competitive Asian action again as next time round World Cup qualification will be at stake.
The last thing anyone wants is for Australia to become the "England" of the Asian Confederation consistently over promising and underdelivering at major tournaments.
One lesson that appears to have widespread acceptance already is that there are domestic players who are ready and able to step up to play at International level and that should send a message to every local player about to line up for season 3 of the Hyundai A-League…there are World Cup spots up for grabs lads!
In my view the Olyroos squad have the perfect opportunity to stake their claim for elevation into the senior squad as they attempt to qualify through the Asian Confederation against Iraq, Lebanon and North Korea….their coach for this is likely to be Graham Arnold and let’s hope he can take the lessons learned over the last 2 weeks to ensure Olympic qualification and the progression of these players into Socceroo squad contention.
Now, like England fans when tournaments get to the semi final stage, all that’s left of the Asian Cup is for us to enjoy the rest of the games as neutrals and if they are anything like the Saudi Arabia v Uzbekistan game last night….that will be no hard task.
Going into the tournaments as one of the favoured teams based predominantly on reputation and a star studded squad of some of Europe’s elite footballers. The media naturally got on board and built the hype fuelled by all the quotes you could wish for from coach and players and the public have got caught up in the this pre tournament…why wouldn’t they? You can't really blame the media after all whose quotes were they reporting?
But then comes the real crunch…performing on the pitch…and again there were eerie parellels with the England team at the last World Cup…a belief that reputation alone can win football matches…the hope that a coach with no real “plan B’ or worse still much of a "plan A" can win a major football tournament…and an apparent refusal to believe that so called “lesser” footballing nations can’t come back and bite you firmly on the derriere….until they do.
I texted my mate during the first half and said “all that needs to happen is to get a stupid red card, play out of their skin with 10 men and go out on penalties” to complete the story…and lo and behold…we all know what happened next.
Let’s get the gripes out of the way first…..it was absolutely not a red card in my view…possibly a yellow for a petulant flick of the hand…but in my mind there has to be a deliberate and seperate movement of an elbow removed from the natural raising of a players arms to gain elevation for it to be a straight red…HOWEVER…referees have TV sets also and is it possible the referee saw Vincenzo’s late elbow to the ribs which went unpunished in the group stages and assumed the worst? The Socceroos didn’t seem to get much from the referee all night with it taking around 42 minutes before Aloisi or Viduka got a foul in their favour and I’ve watched most games and seen far worse “simulation” go unpunished….what are the odds of Australia getting two yellow cards for diving in the same game? It would be a dull world if the conspiracy theorists didn’t have anything to get their teeth into wouldn’t it?!
But to dwell only on the Japan game would do us no favours at all. The critical thing is that we look at the performances as a whole across the tournament (both our own and our new rivals) and not just on the admirable efforts of the ten men who produced a gargantuan effort to hold a Japanese team superior in numbers. England have made this mistake previously and focused on the “glorious exit” and failed to learn many of the lessons they could and should have learned along the way only to fail in excatly the same way at the next tournament.
The fact is that Australia’s Asian Cup campaign resulted in one win against a team ranked 50 places lower than them in the World Rankings even though they were outplayed for large parts of that game….they drew with Oman luckily when the Omanis should have been out of sight over the 90 minutes….they were made to look ordinary by Iraq and whilst they showed great character against Japan I don’t think anyone could say they deserved to win the game and spent the whole of extra time playing for penalties. The fact is that an acceptable group stage level of performance would have meant lining up in Bangkok against Vietnam and avoiding Japan until the final…but let’s hope now we can learn to stop thinking about finals until after a semi final has been won.
I wrote in my blog prior to the tournament questioning whether Australia winning the tournament was necessarily a good thing…as I wrote that I didn’t think it would quite the wake up call it proved to be! Many lessons will hopefully be learned on and off the pitch by players, coaching staff and supporters alike to ensure that everyone is better prepared the next time we go into competitive Asian action again as next time round World Cup qualification will be at stake.
The last thing anyone wants is for Australia to become the "England" of the Asian Confederation consistently over promising and underdelivering at major tournaments.
One lesson that appears to have widespread acceptance already is that there are domestic players who are ready and able to step up to play at International level and that should send a message to every local player about to line up for season 3 of the Hyundai A-League…there are World Cup spots up for grabs lads!
In my view the Olyroos squad have the perfect opportunity to stake their claim for elevation into the senior squad as they attempt to qualify through the Asian Confederation against Iraq, Lebanon and North Korea….their coach for this is likely to be Graham Arnold and let’s hope he can take the lessons learned over the last 2 weeks to ensure Olympic qualification and the progression of these players into Socceroo squad contention.
Now, like England fans when tournaments get to the semi final stage, all that’s left of the Asian Cup is for us to enjoy the rest of the games as neutrals and if they are anything like the Saudi Arabia v Uzbekistan game last night….that will be no hard task.
