ONE more season of football before the World Cup 2010 and the only thing on my mind is that potential Socceroos need first team football to make the squad.
Pim Verbeek's ‘must play first team football' campaign has been so successful that I feel like I should be contributing myself. It's like one of those environmental campaigns where I become so convinced I can play my part in changing the world that I make a point of dividing the paper and bottles out of my rubbish for a whole week.
In fact Pim Verbeek's campaign has brainwashed me so much that I went for a run this week. 5.33.67 minutes into said run I began to question myself as to why am I enduring such extraordinary torture and at 5.34.00 I snapped out of it and decided to come home and have a whinge on the internet.
The headlines for last week's friendly against Ireland looked like another adventure of our hero Timmy Cahill and the gang, such is Cahill's ability to turn whatever he touches into Socceroo gold. A closer look at the match report reveals however that this was more like one of those movie sequels where they managed to recruit the main star but most of the co-stars declined the invitation.
A full strength squad of European based Aussies would have included Vince Grella, Brett Emerton, Richard Garcia, Carl Valeri, Scott Chipperfield and maybe even some fellow called Mark Viduka.
Outside of Culina and Josh Kennedy I don't see too many more Aussies not based in Europe making the squad. This means that if Australia were playing a World Cup fixture last week, the squad would have looked not unlike the one we saw take on Ireland.
So this is where Pim's mantra is making me nervous. On the one hand, that squad showed up a near full strength Ireland squad quite well. On the other hand, where's the first team football lads?!
Of the players that made the pitch, Nick Carle we all want to see you on that pitch but the fact is that you're warming the pine in the English 2nd division while Brett Holman is seeing game time for the Dutch Eredivisie's reigning champions AZ Alkmaar. Ruka, you've got to claw your way out of the FC Twente wilderness - and talking about wilderness, David Carney soon we're going to look your name up in the dictionary and see a picture of a lost bear.
Jedi you've got to start cracking more first team sheets for Gencerbirligi and where's your team mate Bruce Djite? Same goes for James Holland at AZ Alkmaar and Matthew Spiranovic at FC Nurnberg.
Of the players that didn't make the pitch Emmo, Grella, and Garcia are all injured. Valeri's talking himself out of Grossetto but at this stage I've yet to see what squad he's talking himself into. Lucas Neill was sitting on the bench next to Pim doing a good impression of what it appears he's been doing about getting a contract all summer - ie nothing.
At least Mark Viduka is finally getting some consistency in his form at club level and with the Socceroos. He takes longer to decide that he's not going to play with the Socceroos than it takes me to run 400 metres (I've recently found out that this is indeed a very long time) and now he's put in the same performance with EPL clubs Portsmouth and Fulham.
As for the goalkeepers, I wrote a blog a few weeks ago gloating about the depth of stoppers we have behind Mark Schwarzer. Of those keepers I mentioned, Brad Jones is injured while Michael Petkovic, Adam Federici and Ante Covic conceded 8 goals between them last weekend. Schwarzer kept a clean sheet for Fulham as usual. I don't know what Schwarzer's like as a goalkeeper but he's the best bricklayer I've ever seen.
Oh God please don't hurt Mark Schwarzer in the next year. I think this will have to be my new mantra, Pim's ‘must play first team football' mantra is killing me already and the season has only just started.
