The Young Socceroos exit from the Under-20 World Cup was disappointing. But surprising? I must admit I expected a (largely) Australian based team to challenge Costa Rica and Ecuador. On the other hand, given the type of players in our squad, it is hardly shocking we copped five of the best from Spain.

Every single member of the Spanish squad is at a top quality club: Barcelona, Málaga, Espanyol, Real Madrid etc. In fact, most of them are actually playing - week in, week out - for said clubs. Striker Álvaro Vázquez has made over 30 appearances for Espanyol. Recio was a regular for Málaga last season. Sergio Canales has a handful of Real Madrid appearances to his name, as well as two good seasons at Racing Santander.

To go back even further in these players' careers, many of them have been in these high quality football environments since their pre-teens. Football is like a religion and young players train hard from an extremely young age to develop and hone their skills.

The Australian youth setup reflects the fact that we are a minority football code. Unlike Spain, we have to compete with a multitude of other sports. Facilities, funding and players are divided accordingly. In the wider Australian sporting community there is simply not the demand to produce the sort of footballers that Spain have coming out of their ears.

When you look at the Australian line-up, most of them are not A-League regulars, let alone experienced footballers who have been through years of quality training. How are we supposed to compete at international level when most of our players have come off 20-game seasons in the National Youth League?

With a national league comprising of just 10 teams and relatively small squads, the solution is not immediately apparent. Should the A-League change its focus to nurturing young talent (possibly to the detriment of the league's older players)? Or should we let our most talented Young Socceroos go overseas at a young age to let them be 'brought up' in a better football environment?

I'd say the latter is the most sensible at the moment, although the former is preferable in the long term. In order to compete at junior and senior international levels, I believe our youth setup needs to become a set of A-League academies aimed at identifying, training and producing technically talented footballers from a young age. Until this eventuates, Australian players will be comparatively inexperienced at international level.

It wasn't all doom and gloom for the Young Socceroos. For me, two players really stood out - both on opposite sides of the aforementioned A-League vs. overseas debate.

Kerem Bulut showed some remarkable skill in all three matches. An up and coming star at his club, he has benefited from an early move overseas to Mlada Boleslav and a recent burst of first team football. Having never seen the Czech League, I won't pass comment on the quality of the competition, however, Bulut is undeniably playing more football than he would have had he stayed at Sydney FC under Vitezslav Lavicka, who has shown little inclination to play his younger stars.

Mark Birighitti had flashes of brilliance and didn't deserve to concede as many goals as he did. He certainly wasn't helped by the multitude of unnecessary turnovers in midfield and the lack of organisation and communication in his defensive line - possibly attributed to many of his defenders' lack of experience. In my opinion, he is a seriously underrated future star of the Australian game who should be playing regularly at a higher level than the National Youth League.

At the end of the day, there's no substitute for experience and, unfortunately, quality experience is more likely to be found in Europe than in Australia. I was disappointed to hear the post-match comments on SBS heavily criticising Jan Versleijen and the coaching staff when, in reality, the players at their disposal have virtually no experience compared to the Spaniards. The change of formation at half time helped but Spain really took their foot off the accelerator - the game was over for them 20 minutes in.

Versleijen could have played a 4-3-3, a 4-5-1 or 10-0-0 and I don't think it would've made a huge difference. At tournaments such as this, we are competing against nations whose footballing culture is completely different and whose players have two or three seasons more experience on ours.

From an objective point of view - ¡Qué partidazo! But come the next international youth tournament I sincerely hope we are able to field a team of starting eleven footballers, whether they are regulars for A-League clubs, Bundesliga reserve teams or unpronounceable Czech clubs.