If Harry Kewell and the Socceroos are to make it to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, they should follow our “Five Step Guide To World Cup Qualification”
We’re almost halfway along the road to South Africa 2010.
There’s plenty of petrol left in the tank, we’ve hardly hit a bump during the trip so far and Mrs. Verbeek has packed our lunch (mmm… Gouda!). But on the horizon dark clouds form.
Before we can even think about booking that safari side-tour in July 2010, the Socceroos will have to progress through a plucky, under-rated group featuring Bahrain, Qatar, Uzbekistan and familiar foe, Japan.
Fear isn’t the right word: we can match it with Japan and, on paper, we’re better than the other teams.
However, this group still throws up some difficult situations. If the team is to make it to its third World Cup finals, it could do a lot worse than follow our five step plan to South Africa 2010.
STEP ONE
Negotiate a tricky away day to Uzbekistan
When the Olyroos came home from North Korea late last year with the point they needed to cement their place at the Beijing games, the FFA’s coaching staff might have been forgiven for thinking they had seen the worst Asia was able to serve up.
Travelling to the heavily regimented North Korean state, the Olyroos were faced with primitive amenities, a crowd decked out in 1950s military garb and snow on the artificial pitch minutes before kick-off.
It was a deeply foreign experience that rattled the team, as the players struggled to settle at any time during the match.
Since joining the AFC in 2006, the Olyroos and Socceroos have crisscrossed the Middle Eastern deserts, they’ve sweated in South-East Asian humidity, and they have passed this North Korean test.
But now, the final qualification draw has thrown up one more surprise.
Uzbekistan, central Asia’s northernmost post, represents another of the AFC’s many frontiers: a country less than half the area of New South Wales but with a population of close to 30 million.
The country’s football team is the most successful of the five former Soviet states found on the border between Europe and Asia to have joined the AFC.
Only extreme injustice prevented the side from reaching Germany 2006. A 1-0 home win against Bahrain was cruelly ordered to be replayed after the Japanese referee erred and the Uzbeks crashed out in the resulting match.
With rich resources in natural gas, gold and cotton, Uzbekistan threatens to become Asia’s “little Russia”.
Russia has started making Europe glance ominously eastwards in recent years by converting their massive human and economic resources into football performance, highlighted by their excellent showing at Euro 2008. Australia had better be wary of the Uzbeks doing the same in Asia.
While Uzbekistan will struggle to ever be a contender at major tournaments until they produce more top-level players, getting the most out of their home advantage means the Uzbeks will always be in with a shout in qualifying.
The most ominous fact for the Socceroos ahead of this month’s clash though? The Uzbeks haven’t lost in a World Cup qualifier at home since 2001.
FourFourTwo Says
Two things work to our advantage with the Uzbekistan away leg. Firstly it’s one of the nearer Asian nations to Europe, so for the European-based Aussies, travel will be less of a factor. Secondly, there is still time to overcome a bad opener – a draw would be an excellent result, but with the entire campaign ahead of us, a loss wouldn’t mean the end of the world.
STEP TWO
Avoid A Slow Start
The football community welcomes the sport’s growing relevance to Australia’s mainstream, yet this migration also brings its share of negatives.
Australia’s players and coaching staff may understand the challenges posed by Qatar and Uzbekistan, but to the average Joe, accustomed to “Our” Steph Rice and the boys in the baggy green beating all comers, any slip-up against such nobodies is an embarrassing failure. This level of public expectation could pose a problem for the Socceroos in the coming group.
When the fixtures were announced, Australia’s were “back-loaded”. This means that for the majority of the group stage we will have a game in hand of the other teams. At the beginning of April, we will still have four games remaining, while the other four teams will only have three.
This could be regarded as a positive, a source of confidence in the early fixtures given that three of these final four matches are at home. If all we need is a draw from the final blockbuster against Japan for example, it would take a brave man to bet against us.
However, given Verbeek is still relatively unproven in the job, things could get nasty early for the Socceroos. Even if we were to get a valuable draw in Uzbekistan but then slip up against Qatar (home) or Bahrain (away), we would face Japan, away, in third or fourth place in the group. A draw in Japan – a good result in anyone’s books – would leave us languishing.
Remember the hailstorm of criticism Verbeek faced after writing off the home match against China with a rash of experimental, and ultimately poor, selections? If we’re sitting on anything less than five points when February rolls around, multiply that kind of criticism by ten.
With so much pressure on Verbeek and the players to take us to South Africa, will they be able to take advantage during those key final four fixtures?
FourFourTwo Says
At least six (although seven would be nice) points in the bank before we visit Japan in February 2009 would set us up very nicely. The last thing we want to be doing is playing catch up, especially with an untested coach and ill-informed mainstream media ready to put the boot in. STEP THREE
Overcome Pim Verbeek's Inexperience
So, what do you know about Pim Verbeek? He’s Dutch, right? He worked with Guus Hiddink, right? He coached Korea to third at the Asian Cup, which means he’s better than Graham Arnold, right?
What you need to know is this: as good as a coach Verbeek ultimately proves to be, right now he is somewhere he has never been before.
Up until he took the reigns at South Korea for the 2007 Asian Cup, his CV was looking more and more like that of a ‘career assistant’. In the previous ten years, he had worked more as an assistant coach, at a better standard, than he had as a head coach.
In this role of assistant was where he had his biggest success, particularly alongside Guus Hiddink in 2002 with South Korea. As far as his record as head coach, his tenure with Australia stands head and shoulders above any of his previous stints.
To clarify, we are not suggesting the pathway to the position of head coach should not involve being assistant. Obviously, Verbeek will have picked up a thing or two as Korea successfully navigated their way through qualification to Germany. The fact remains though he hasn’t endured the pressures of qualification as head coach before in his career.
Worryingly, his greatest head coaching achievement to date, third at last year’s Asian Cup, raises some concerns about his abilities to match it with the world’s top echelon of coaches.
The highly fancied Korean team won just one match (excluding their two penalty shout-out wins), a 1-0 win over Indonesia. They lost to Bahrain – group rivals for Australia this time around – and scored just three goals, including none in the knock-out stages.
Discipline could also be a factor. Despite being a straight talker in his media interviews, he has been known to turn a blind eye when his players get in trouble. Star striker Lee Dong-Gook and goalkeeper Lee Woon-Jae went out drinking at an Indonesian karaoke bar a day before the loss to Bahrain in the Asian Cup.
While the players were given lengthy suspensions three months after the fact, Verbeek continued to select them during the tournament. It will be interesting to see how Verbeek deals with any possible disruptions within the Aussie squad.
FourFourTwo Says
So far Pim has done everything that has been asked of him, making the next round of qualifying with a game to spare. But now the stakes are higher and Verbeek will be learning on the job in trying to lead a team to the World Cup finals.
STEP FOUR
Making Home Field Advantage Count
When the qualifying draw was announced, it was obvious we were in the easier of the two groups, avoiding the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the two Korean nations.
Less fancied countries Bahrain, Qatar and Uzbekistan aren’t expected to provide much of a fight beyond their home matches. We’ve beaten Qatar in the previous stage at home and away, and we had the better of Bahrain in qualifying for the 2007 Asian Cup. Question marks do remain over the Uzbek trip, but there’s no doubt that in Australia these three teams will be offering long odds to even get a point from us.
However, all of these nations possess the ability to surprise us. They are here for a reason, having proven themselves in the previous phase.
Uzbekistan won its first five matches, including a 3-0 thumping of Saudi Arabia, to ensure progress. Bahrain won its first three matches, including a 1-0 triumph over Japan. Qatar was even more impressive, progressing through Australia’s difficult group past the more favoured Chinese and Asian champions Iraq. The two matches against Australia were the only two that they lost.
Each country possesses a handful of match-winners capable of nicking a goal or getting their team a result. Powerful Uruguayan-born striker Sebastian Quintana scored three goals in three games for Qatar at the Asian Cup, and tricky former Asian Player of the Year Khalfan Ibrahim came on and scored against Australia in the previous stage.
A’ala Hubail from Bahrain was top scorer at the 2004 Asian Cup as a 22-year-old when Bahrain made the semi-finals, and his goals were enough for 1-0 victories over Oman (away) and Japan (home) in the previous qualification phase.
Uzbekistan, too, may prove to be a banana skin. The majority of their defence and goalkeeper have played or are playing their club football together at Pakhtakor Tashkent, giving them a massive advantage in terms of teamwork and communication, highlighted by four clean sheets from six games in the last phase.
In addition, their talismanic striker Maksim Shatskikh, forward for Dynamo Kiev, already has two goals in this campaign. (When FourFourTwo met him in 2005 and mentioned Australia, he laughed a most Soviet laugh out of sheer arrogance... or possibly miscommunication.)
If any of these players can come to Australia and snatch a surprise winner – far from impossible against Australia’s unsettled defence – it could turn the group on its head. Make no mistake, losing concentration at all during our four home matches will put our ticket to a third World Cup finals at risk.
FourFourTwo Says
Mental discipline from the players is going to be key. This is where the 2006 World Cup veterans must step up, to not only make sure they are prepared but to make sure the younger, less experienced Socceroos are ready to make visiting teams suffer.STEP FIVE
Deal With The Threat Of Japan
Though Australia doesn’t necessarily have to overcome Japan to qualify for South Africa, the Japanese side still poses our most significant hurdle. It is relieving to hear then that not all is rosy for the Blue Samurai.
After former coach Ivica Osim suffered a stroke late last year, Takeshi Okada has taken the reigns of Japan’s national side. Okada has already had a stint in charge in the late 1990s, when his side recorded three losses to bow out early at its first World Cup finals in France.
After some trouble in the previous stage, together with his former record as national team boss and continued criticism over his style, Okada is currently an unpopular figure in Japan.
SBS football reporter Scott McIntyre has spent much of the last decade living and working in Japan. As an FC Tokyo fan, he is a close follower of the Japanese game.
“Let’s not forget that Okada’s not first choice to be here. Osim came in and was very vocal about the fact the Asian Cup was preparation for the World Cup qualifiers.
“Is he the right man for the job? Probably not,” he says. “If in the first say, two games, the results aren’t there, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see a big name foreign coach come in by the time Australia comes to Japan.”
On the pitch, the Japan squad is far from invincible. The biggest hole is up front.
“The country hasn’t produced a top rate striker since Kazu,” McIntyre believes. “The J.League is great for the production of young Japanese goalkeepers, defenders and midfielders, but what the emphasis on foreign strikers [at J.League clubs] has done is that it’s killed any development process for Japanese strikers.”
In midfield, however, Japan’s quality is sure test to Australia, despite the Socceroos boasting a world-class midfield of their own. Shunsuke Nakamura is the best-known Japanese player, but McIntyre puts this status down to flag-waving female fans making him the Japanese Beckham. Instead he names Daisuke Matsui and Keita Suzuki as the team’s most important players.
Matsui has spent the last four years in France at first Le Mans and now St Etienne, while Suzuki has long been a fixture of the powerful Urawa side.
However, it is Suzuki’s club team-mate Marcus Tulio Tanaka who could prove to be Japan’s trump card. Brazilian born with Italian and Japanese heritage, Tanaka is the only Japanese player in the J.League’s top ten goalscorers this season, and looks certain to be the centerpiece of a mean Japanese defence.
“There’s a perception that still exists that defensively Asian players and especially Japanese players are somehow small and slightly built. Now they’ve got Tanaka and Yuji Nakazawa who’s an absolutely beast. These guys are bigger than anything Australia can put on the park.”
FourFourTwo Says
There’s no middle ground with Japan. Its threat in the group will either be minimal – we pick up enough points that our head-to-head with them is irrelevant – or critical – a winner goes to the World Cup in the last game of qualifying at the MCG on June 17.
This article appeared in the October edition of Australian FourFourTwo. To subscribe, click here
There’s plenty of petrol left in the tank, we’ve hardly hit a bump during the trip so far and Mrs. Verbeek has packed our lunch (mmm… Gouda!). But on the horizon dark clouds form.
Before we can even think about booking that safari side-tour in July 2010, the Socceroos will have to progress through a plucky, under-rated group featuring Bahrain, Qatar, Uzbekistan and familiar foe, Japan.
Fear isn’t the right word: we can match it with Japan and, on paper, we’re better than the other teams.
However, this group still throws up some difficult situations. If the team is to make it to its third World Cup finals, it could do a lot worse than follow our five step plan to South Africa 2010.
STEP ONE
Negotiate a tricky away day to Uzbekistan
When the Olyroos came home from North Korea late last year with the point they needed to cement their place at the Beijing games, the FFA’s coaching staff might have been forgiven for thinking they had seen the worst Asia was able to serve up.
Travelling to the heavily regimented North Korean state, the Olyroos were faced with primitive amenities, a crowd decked out in 1950s military garb and snow on the artificial pitch minutes before kick-off.
It was a deeply foreign experience that rattled the team, as the players struggled to settle at any time during the match.
Since joining the AFC in 2006, the Olyroos and Socceroos have crisscrossed the Middle Eastern deserts, they’ve sweated in South-East Asian humidity, and they have passed this North Korean test.
But now, the final qualification draw has thrown up one more surprise.
Uzbekistan, central Asia’s northernmost post, represents another of the AFC’s many frontiers: a country less than half the area of New South Wales but with a population of close to 30 million.
The country’s football team is the most successful of the five former Soviet states found on the border between Europe and Asia to have joined the AFC.
Only extreme injustice prevented the side from reaching Germany 2006. A 1-0 home win against Bahrain was cruelly ordered to be replayed after the Japanese referee erred and the Uzbeks crashed out in the resulting match.
With rich resources in natural gas, gold and cotton, Uzbekistan threatens to become Asia’s “little Russia”.
Russia has started making Europe glance ominously eastwards in recent years by converting their massive human and economic resources into football performance, highlighted by their excellent showing at Euro 2008. Australia had better be wary of the Uzbeks doing the same in Asia.
While Uzbekistan will struggle to ever be a contender at major tournaments until they produce more top-level players, getting the most out of their home advantage means the Uzbeks will always be in with a shout in qualifying.
The most ominous fact for the Socceroos ahead of this month’s clash though? The Uzbeks haven’t lost in a World Cup qualifier at home since 2001.
FourFourTwo Says
Two things work to our advantage with the Uzbekistan away leg. Firstly it’s one of the nearer Asian nations to Europe, so for the European-based Aussies, travel will be less of a factor. Secondly, there is still time to overcome a bad opener – a draw would be an excellent result, but with the entire campaign ahead of us, a loss wouldn’t mean the end of the world.
STEP TWO
Avoid A Slow Start
The football community welcomes the sport’s growing relevance to Australia’s mainstream, yet this migration also brings its share of negatives.
Australia’s players and coaching staff may understand the challenges posed by Qatar and Uzbekistan, but to the average Joe, accustomed to “Our” Steph Rice and the boys in the baggy green beating all comers, any slip-up against such nobodies is an embarrassing failure. This level of public expectation could pose a problem for the Socceroos in the coming group.
When the fixtures were announced, Australia’s were “back-loaded”. This means that for the majority of the group stage we will have a game in hand of the other teams. At the beginning of April, we will still have four games remaining, while the other four teams will only have three.
This could be regarded as a positive, a source of confidence in the early fixtures given that three of these final four matches are at home. If all we need is a draw from the final blockbuster against Japan for example, it would take a brave man to bet against us.
However, given Verbeek is still relatively unproven in the job, things could get nasty early for the Socceroos. Even if we were to get a valuable draw in Uzbekistan but then slip up against Qatar (home) or Bahrain (away), we would face Japan, away, in third or fourth place in the group. A draw in Japan – a good result in anyone’s books – would leave us languishing.
Remember the hailstorm of criticism Verbeek faced after writing off the home match against China with a rash of experimental, and ultimately poor, selections? If we’re sitting on anything less than five points when February rolls around, multiply that kind of criticism by ten.
With so much pressure on Verbeek and the players to take us to South Africa, will they be able to take advantage during those key final four fixtures?
FourFourTwo Says
At least six (although seven would be nice) points in the bank before we visit Japan in February 2009 would set us up very nicely. The last thing we want to be doing is playing catch up, especially with an untested coach and ill-informed mainstream media ready to put the boot in. STEP THREE
Overcome Pim Verbeek's Inexperience
So, what do you know about Pim Verbeek? He’s Dutch, right? He worked with Guus Hiddink, right? He coached Korea to third at the Asian Cup, which means he’s better than Graham Arnold, right?
What you need to know is this: as good as a coach Verbeek ultimately proves to be, right now he is somewhere he has never been before.
Up until he took the reigns at South Korea for the 2007 Asian Cup, his CV was looking more and more like that of a ‘career assistant’. In the previous ten years, he had worked more as an assistant coach, at a better standard, than he had as a head coach.
In this role of assistant was where he had his biggest success, particularly alongside Guus Hiddink in 2002 with South Korea. As far as his record as head coach, his tenure with Australia stands head and shoulders above any of his previous stints.
To clarify, we are not suggesting the pathway to the position of head coach should not involve being assistant. Obviously, Verbeek will have picked up a thing or two as Korea successfully navigated their way through qualification to Germany. The fact remains though he hasn’t endured the pressures of qualification as head coach before in his career.
Worryingly, his greatest head coaching achievement to date, third at last year’s Asian Cup, raises some concerns about his abilities to match it with the world’s top echelon of coaches.
The highly fancied Korean team won just one match (excluding their two penalty shout-out wins), a 1-0 win over Indonesia. They lost to Bahrain – group rivals for Australia this time around – and scored just three goals, including none in the knock-out stages.
Discipline could also be a factor. Despite being a straight talker in his media interviews, he has been known to turn a blind eye when his players get in trouble. Star striker Lee Dong-Gook and goalkeeper Lee Woon-Jae went out drinking at an Indonesian karaoke bar a day before the loss to Bahrain in the Asian Cup.
While the players were given lengthy suspensions three months after the fact, Verbeek continued to select them during the tournament. It will be interesting to see how Verbeek deals with any possible disruptions within the Aussie squad.
FourFourTwo Says
So far Pim has done everything that has been asked of him, making the next round of qualifying with a game to spare. But now the stakes are higher and Verbeek will be learning on the job in trying to lead a team to the World Cup finals.
STEP FOUR
Making Home Field Advantage Count
When the qualifying draw was announced, it was obvious we were in the easier of the two groups, avoiding the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the two Korean nations.
Less fancied countries Bahrain, Qatar and Uzbekistan aren’t expected to provide much of a fight beyond their home matches. We’ve beaten Qatar in the previous stage at home and away, and we had the better of Bahrain in qualifying for the 2007 Asian Cup. Question marks do remain over the Uzbek trip, but there’s no doubt that in Australia these three teams will be offering long odds to even get a point from us.
However, all of these nations possess the ability to surprise us. They are here for a reason, having proven themselves in the previous phase.
Uzbekistan won its first five matches, including a 3-0 thumping of Saudi Arabia, to ensure progress. Bahrain won its first three matches, including a 1-0 triumph over Japan. Qatar was even more impressive, progressing through Australia’s difficult group past the more favoured Chinese and Asian champions Iraq. The two matches against Australia were the only two that they lost.
Each country possesses a handful of match-winners capable of nicking a goal or getting their team a result. Powerful Uruguayan-born striker Sebastian Quintana scored three goals in three games for Qatar at the Asian Cup, and tricky former Asian Player of the Year Khalfan Ibrahim came on and scored against Australia in the previous stage.
A’ala Hubail from Bahrain was top scorer at the 2004 Asian Cup as a 22-year-old when Bahrain made the semi-finals, and his goals were enough for 1-0 victories over Oman (away) and Japan (home) in the previous qualification phase.
Uzbekistan, too, may prove to be a banana skin. The majority of their defence and goalkeeper have played or are playing their club football together at Pakhtakor Tashkent, giving them a massive advantage in terms of teamwork and communication, highlighted by four clean sheets from six games in the last phase.
In addition, their talismanic striker Maksim Shatskikh, forward for Dynamo Kiev, already has two goals in this campaign. (When FourFourTwo met him in 2005 and mentioned Australia, he laughed a most Soviet laugh out of sheer arrogance... or possibly miscommunication.)
If any of these players can come to Australia and snatch a surprise winner – far from impossible against Australia’s unsettled defence – it could turn the group on its head. Make no mistake, losing concentration at all during our four home matches will put our ticket to a third World Cup finals at risk.
FourFourTwo Says
Mental discipline from the players is going to be key. This is where the 2006 World Cup veterans must step up, to not only make sure they are prepared but to make sure the younger, less experienced Socceroos are ready to make visiting teams suffer.STEP FIVE
Deal With The Threat Of Japan
Though Australia doesn’t necessarily have to overcome Japan to qualify for South Africa, the Japanese side still poses our most significant hurdle. It is relieving to hear then that not all is rosy for the Blue Samurai.
After former coach Ivica Osim suffered a stroke late last year, Takeshi Okada has taken the reigns of Japan’s national side. Okada has already had a stint in charge in the late 1990s, when his side recorded three losses to bow out early at its first World Cup finals in France.
After some trouble in the previous stage, together with his former record as national team boss and continued criticism over his style, Okada is currently an unpopular figure in Japan.
SBS football reporter Scott McIntyre has spent much of the last decade living and working in Japan. As an FC Tokyo fan, he is a close follower of the Japanese game.
“Let’s not forget that Okada’s not first choice to be here. Osim came in and was very vocal about the fact the Asian Cup was preparation for the World Cup qualifiers.
“Is he the right man for the job? Probably not,” he says. “If in the first say, two games, the results aren’t there, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see a big name foreign coach come in by the time Australia comes to Japan.”
On the pitch, the Japan squad is far from invincible. The biggest hole is up front.
“The country hasn’t produced a top rate striker since Kazu,” McIntyre believes. “The J.League is great for the production of young Japanese goalkeepers, defenders and midfielders, but what the emphasis on foreign strikers [at J.League clubs] has done is that it’s killed any development process for Japanese strikers.”
In midfield, however, Japan’s quality is sure test to Australia, despite the Socceroos boasting a world-class midfield of their own. Shunsuke Nakamura is the best-known Japanese player, but McIntyre puts this status down to flag-waving female fans making him the Japanese Beckham. Instead he names Daisuke Matsui and Keita Suzuki as the team’s most important players.
Matsui has spent the last four years in France at first Le Mans and now St Etienne, while Suzuki has long been a fixture of the powerful Urawa side.
However, it is Suzuki’s club team-mate Marcus Tulio Tanaka who could prove to be Japan’s trump card. Brazilian born with Italian and Japanese heritage, Tanaka is the only Japanese player in the J.League’s top ten goalscorers this season, and looks certain to be the centerpiece of a mean Japanese defence.
“There’s a perception that still exists that defensively Asian players and especially Japanese players are somehow small and slightly built. Now they’ve got Tanaka and Yuji Nakazawa who’s an absolutely beast. These guys are bigger than anything Australia can put on the park.”
FourFourTwo Says
There’s no middle ground with Japan. Its threat in the group will either be minimal – we pick up enough points that our head-to-head with them is irrelevant – or critical – a winner goes to the World Cup in the last game of qualifying at the MCG on June 17.
This article appeared in the October edition of Australian FourFourTwo. To subscribe, click here
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