Boys To Do A Mans Job

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In my match report, I lambasted the performances of many of our young players. I, critically and unfortunately, glossed over a very important point. Some of the blame for that game needs to be shifted to those off the pitch. Alex Tobin, Australia’s most capped player, had this to say (complete article here):

“There’s so much more value in putting a young player or two in when they’re surrounded by nine experienced players on the park,” Tobin told the Herald last night. “They will always develop quicker being in the environment only generated by senior players.

“I wouldn’t like to put myself in a situation where I’m bringing in nine new players because that leaves the team very unbalanced, and it puts extra pressure on players making their debuts because there’s nobody to guide them. For a match like Sunday, if you decided to rest a few players, bring in three, maybe four players, then fair enough, you could probably get away with it. The players would have learned a lot and the side would have kept most of its structure, but this was a totally new team.”

The years of extra experience of the Chinese players really shone through during the game. With only 37% possession, their intelligent use of the ball was much better than Australia and a significant reason for this was the lack of leadership and old heads on the park for the Socceroos.

If you look at the integration of players into the national team over the last few years, you will realise that a key ingredient of successful integration is the experience of those around you. The squad against China was unfortunate enough to be subject to a debacle in decision making off the field that resulted in only one player with significant international experience being on it. This is in stark contrast to the successful introductions of the following players: Luke Wilkshire established himself under Hiddink, surrounded by an experienced squad that was going to the World Cup while Josh Kennedy was similarly introduced into the national team during this campaign. David Carney, Michael Beauchamp and Mark Milligan all had good Asian Cups with basically the whole senior squad playing in that tournament. Recently, the likes of Brett Holman, Scott McDonald, Carl Valeri and Jade North have all become integral parts of the first-team, the latter two in particular excelling during qualifying.

I doubt this would have happened under Hiddink. He got a full strength team to play against the Solomon Islands, home and away, despite the home leg being basically academic after a 7-0 thumping in the first leg. Behind the jolly exterior of Hiddink lies a dictator of a manager. At minimum, he will forcibly shape his team into the fittest unit in the tournament (he made Viduka lose 8 pounds according to this article) and he is working that old magic again with his new nation. Mind you, his teams play very good football too. I was not surprised that the Russians out-legged the aging Swedish and scored two injury time goals against Holland. The game against China was spoken of as an opportunity to blood the youth but in essence, this opportunity was already partly, if not largely, wasted before the youngsters even stepped onto the pitch. Under Hiddink, we would not have wasted this opportunity (and I doubt that any sensible national coach would not foresee such an outcome which is why I’m inclined to believe that the departure of the senior players was forced on Verbeek). The dictator Hiddink probably would have crushed such an attempted coup with his authority and he would have surely not wasted this opportunity given the rarity of being able to experiment in a competitive international. With little guidance and leadership, the result and the performance was predictable and I unfortunately did not fully realise this important aspect that significantly contributed to the failure until I read the above article. I laid basically all the blame at the doorstep of the young players which was wrong. But I guess there is one constant: decisions, decisions, decisions; bad ones will kill you in international football.

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Filed under Australian Football, Football, Guus Hiddink, Olyroos, Soccer, Socceroos, World Cup, Youth Football