Hiddink Eliminates the Risks

Help me out here, I can't tell if this opinion piece from Crikey is a joke, a wind up, a stunt, maybe an attempt at some more advanced form of humour that I simply fail to comprehend. Or is it merely ill informed nonsense?

The author seems to think that the FFA have instructed Guus Hiddink and his assistants to select a "conservative" World Cup team for Australia that is long on experience and short on young talent.

Alternatively, they could have stacked the team with youth and taken a greater risk in the hope that one or two players explode into international prominence.

The World Cup gave 17-year-old Pele, 19-year-old Peruvian Teofilo Cubillas and 18-year-old Michael Owen an opportunity to shoot from relative obscurity to international stardom on the back of two or three memorable performances.

Allow me to formulate a response. First, stacking the team with youth would not simply be a great (and stupid) risk it would involve a blatant disregard for the best players we have. What's the point of going to a World Cup without the best possible team? Second, if we did in fact have a handful of players carrying the potential ability of Pele, selecting them in the squad would not involve a great deal of risk. It would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, we don't have those players. If in fact I am wrong and we do indeed have players with that type of unbelievable talent, the onus is on the Crikey correspondent to inform us who they are. I'm sure Hiddink would love to know! Third, the World Cup may have been an international springboard for the stars of yesteryear but in very few cases do amazing talents explode onto the global scene in the modern era. Michael Owen was already a renowned sharpshooter in the Premier League when he performed brilliantly against Argentina and Romania in his first World Cup. The eighteen year-old superstars of tomorrow already possess lucrative contracts with huge teams like Arsenal (Fabregas, Walcott), Barcelona (Messi) and Ajax (Babel). Even Australia's greatest teenaged prospect, Kaz Patafta, is already signed up to Benfica. The reason Patafta is not in the squad has nothing to do with a general unawareness surrounding his talent (Hiddink wanted him for PSV), but rather the general consensus that he's not yet good enough to compete against Shinji Ono or Darijo Srna, let alone Ronaldinho. Should we have selected him and played him in midfield ahead of one of Kewell, Bresciano, Cahill or Culina? You decide.

Frank Farina was sacked for his inability to develop a new defence and develop youth in the Aussie team, instead relying on the older heads to maintain the status quo. But ultimately, if Australia can't win the World Cup, then it should be aiming to blood the World Cup stars of tomorrow.

Are the short term gains of possibly scratching out a win against the likes of Japan, Croatia or Brazil greater than the longer term benefits of grooming the next generation of Aussie Socceroo stars?

Talk about negativity! But let's get back to the facts. Was Farina sacked for such reasons? Or did it have more to do with (a) a string of poor results at the Confederations Cup, and (b) Frank Lowy wanting to roll the dice and give us every chance of making the World Cup by hiring an esteemed manager with a world class reputation? Of course it is well known that Farina stuck with certain tactical strategies, even when they proved inadequate against both top class opposition (Uruguay) and lower-tier national teams (New Zealand). It's ridiculous to claim that he did not develop youthful talent, however. Farina was responsible for kick-starting the national careers of Marco Bresciano, Mile Sterjovski, Luke Wilkshire, Ljubo Milicevic, Ahmad Elrich, Brett Holman and Jon McKain. He was also keen on Michael Thwaite but never manufactured the occasion to cap him. Unlike Pele, however, none of these players were ready for the big time when they were teenagers. Bresciano wasn't all that impressive early on when Farina played him regularly ... in international friendlies. Finally, I think it's possible that the short-term benefits of qualifying for the second round of the World Cup might in fact be far, far greater than any rather more nebulous longer-term gains of a few young players who've gotten themselves a thrashing from Brazil. Could this piece be yet another example of The Fear and anti-football diatribe creeping into ostensibly reputable criticism? If Australia somehow manages to get four or more points from its three group games and tee up a second round match it will be a phenomenal achievement. One that will deserve every accolade, financial receipt and tail-on promotional affect that comes its way. Will it be easy? Hell no! Let's not throw the towel in before giving it a decent crack, though, eh? Such thoughts never would have gotten us over the line against Uruguay.

By all means, I agree that we should aim to groom our future talent when the opportunity arises. But the World Cup -- the World Cup! -- is not a suitable venue for the purpose of developing young recruits. There are other tournaments catering to those needs: the U-17 and U-20 World Youth Championships, the U-23 Olympics, the Asian Cup, for instance, and their various qualifying tournaments. Not to mention the A-League, a competition that our young players should seek to dominate if they want to capture the hearts and chequebooks of Europe's biggest clubs. Nick Ward, probably the best U-20 player in Australia last year, is currently in contract negotiations with Queens Park Rangers. I'm a massive fan of Ward's, but if he was Pele standard don't you think that perhaps a higher profile club would be chasing him?

Our World Cup team is not quite what was expected, but not having seen it in action I think it's far too early to judge how well me might or might not do when it comes to the tough challenges of Japan, Brazil and Croatia. After Greece, Holland and Liechtenstein we should have a firmer grasp of Hiddink's ideas. As everyone with half a clue has already stated, minnows have been known to knock off giants. And if Kewell, Viduka and Bresciano can run amok, we'll hardly be minnows now, will we?