The Long Term Solution

Obviously we need to get young strikers into the top leagues if we are ever to have world class strikers in the Socceroos, but their development has to start at home.

Bearing in mind the time/space and defender desperation confronted by strikers in the danger zone, we need a striker curriculum that identifies the skills needed to cope with those problems. Off the top of my head, the key skills are these:

Speed: you can’t do much to improve that via coaching but you can coach how best to use it;

Super tight ball control and foot speed: a player who can take three steps to your two will always beat you if he maintains control of the ball – this can be coached;

Calmness under pressure: experience is the best teacher for this but drills that simulate decision making under pressure can be coached;

Hard and accurate shooting: too many Australian strikers look at the goalkeeper last when shooting. This sends a message from the brain to the foot directing the foot to shoot at the keeper unless over-ridden. Young strikers must learn to look away from the keeper to their target, and then look at the ball before shooting. This will send a message to the foot that directs the shot at the target (forgetting to look at the ball last often results in balls being skied);

Ruthlessness: strikers can’t be polite. They must hunt and kill like arch predators – again and again – wallowing in an orgy of goals;

Vision and intelligence: despite the responsibility to find the time and space to shoot, strikers must also remember they are part of a team and someone else may be in a better position, either to shoot, or to help the striker beat an inconvenient defender with a one-two. Great strikers know where their team mates are and when to use them.

New kid on the block, Daniel Arzani

There are other aspects to being a striker (and different types of striker) but all strikers need these qualities and all (with the exception of blistering pace) can be coached.

The other benefit, of course, is that the better young strikers get, the better the young defenders will have to be to cope with them – thus both ends of the pitch will keep forcing each other to improve with the general quality going up every year.

It’s a pretty stark condemnation of our development system to think that our two most technically gifted attackers learnt their skills in futsal (Tom Rogic) and Iranian street football (Daniel Arzani). Our coaching focus has been too much on defence – it’s time to sharpen the attack and see whether our game can prosper that way.