In three games at the recent World Cup, playing the teams ranked 7, 11 and 12 in the World, we conceded five goals – one of them a dodgy VAR penalty and two others were super unlucky deflections. All things considered, that was not too bad for a country rated 36, so clearly, defense is not a problem. Australia’s biggest problem is scoring goals.
The Short Term Solution for the Socceroos
We don’t have time to wait for the players who might be developed over the next 10 to 15 years with a change of coaching approach. We need to identify some decent attackers now, or at least come up with a system that gives our anointed strikers the best chance of finding time and space.
The one thing we do have among our Australian attackers is pace, but it has to be used to best effect. How many times in Russia did we see Matt Leckie or Robbie Kruse or Aziz Behich get past the last defender and then cut back?
It drove me bonkers that we constantly had players win that half a metre needed to get an early cross in, but they didn’t cross! They kept trying to win themselves even more time/space and what that did was allow the opposition to get back in shape to deal with whatever cross might eventually come in. (And too often it didn't.)
A defending team is most vulnerable when out of shape and scrambling back – with attackers running their lines among them. The Socceroos must look to get early balls into the middle and it then becomes the strikers’ jobs to get there ahead of the panicking defenders to finish. The time/space comes pre-delivered by the fact that the defenders aren’t there first to close it down.
I have faith Arnie will encourage exactly this style of play. At the Mariners, he used the likes of Josh Rose and Pedj Bojic to deliver early balls and then at Sydney he had Rhyan Grant and Michael Zullo doing the same things. (Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Grant get another go in the Socceroos now Arnie is there.) Adrian Mierzejewski also was notorious for getting early balls in from both wide and deep, so Arnie knows the value of early balls in to fast strikers and good headers.
We’ve seen at Russia that we have a team that can cope with the best attackers in the world, now we just have to find the best way to utilise our strength in attack.
Such as it is.
Adrian’s latest book The Fighting Man is in the shops right now or available through Booktopia. Adrian also wrote Mr Cleansheets.
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