Given the humidity, the soggy and clumpy pitch and the team's obvious lack of playing time together as a unit, the predominantly A-League-based national team performed passably in the rather flat and eventless 0-0 draw with Singapore, who, it should also be pointed out, played admirably.
The match wasn't a disaster. No truly awful mistakes were made to allow Singapore to score. No rash challenges ended in red cards or injuries to either team. No childish outbursts were witnessed. It was, in a mental and emotional sense, a pleasingly mature performance from Australia, but certainly one that lacked the precision and execution of the 3-0 victory over Qatar.
The Round Ball Analyst provides an instructive report card and match review.
Some insights surrounding Pim Verbeek's impression of the match are also available, since he selected seven (then later nine) participants in the game to join the full squad to travel to China for Wednesday's World Cup qualifying match in Kunming. It seems Verbeek was impressed with Adam Griffiths, perhaps with a view to his versatility across the backline and into midfield, while Bruce Djite also did enough in his short appearance as a substitute to convince the national coach of his firepower. However, among the additions, only Jade North and Archie Thompson are likely to see game time.
Verbeek also showed his squad tactics a bit with the previously announced squad players he decided to leave out. Perhaps thinking that its better all round for the unlikely to play European-based players to be sent back home (rather than sit on the bench, potentially disgrunted) and for the A-Leaguers to build some squad experience (i.e. with no intention of having them enter the fray), James Troisi (one of our best against Singapore), Adam Federici, Nick Carle and Jacob Burns were all uninvited.
2 comments:
Troisi was obviously one of the better players on the park against Singapore, so interesting that Pim didn't select him for the China squad....
james, thanks for the mention and great to see you back on the blog, even if only for the roos...
to be honest, theres nothing like the socceroos to arouse opinions...just love it when they play, but it's a pity the fox sports news is so obsessed with afl...the game, less than 24 hours away, is buried 40 minutes into a one hour segment, just shocking, but not surprising.
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