Australian National Team Thread - #ArnieOut!

Yeah, Matthews had a pretty good game, especially those vertical passes in transition. Caceres seemed a bit lost playing further back… though to his defence, everyone seemed a bit disjointed.

Poppa has shown that pretty much all the squad is at the same level - not that bad, but also not that good. Every single player gave the ball away cheaply, or held onto the ball too long, etc. you can pretty much chop and change the whole team and the outcome wouldn’t change - we’re just not that good.

At least it shows that we’ve got options and don’t need to go back to players like Leckie or even Boyle if they’ve got a hint of an injury.

Maybe as we get closer to a core 15 players we will start to get more cohesion in attack. In the first half, that 1:1 Yengi had was made harder by McGree’s ball being slightly off. Even in the goal that we scored, the earlier ball out wide wasn’t great and held up the attack a bit. Happened a few other times, and others we just didn’t give the ball when there were good early runs.

With more familiarity between the players, that might give us a few more goals, but hard to see much more improvement from this cohort.

Saudi Arabia look shitter than they ever have.

Their home results so far are 1-1 with Indonesia, 0-2 Japan, 0-0 Bahrain.

Not exactly a fortress.

I still maintain we are the least shit out of the group other than Japan and will make it through relatively easily from here.

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Hah shit I missed this first time round, just assumed he scuffed it somehow down the middle of the goal.

Not to sound too optimistic, but we also haven’t coughed up as many goals as anyone else in contention for the second spot. It means the pressure on the opposition strikers will be even more.

Probably not that much weaker to be fair but I’d still prefer prime Leckie, Degenak, Sainsbury, Rogic and Mooy, Regular game time Matt Ryan, pre injury Boyle, young Behich over the current crop bar maybe Souttar, Bos and Mcgree

The other nations strengthening does play a big part though

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Just watched the “highlights”.

I’m glad I didn’t wake up for that.

Is it just me, or the camera angle but that pitch looked narrow as hell.

The old Lee Sterry move when he was coaching the Newcastle Breakers. Pull the pitch in when he was playing Marconi or Sth Melbourne, pull it out when he was playing Morwell.

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Amazing that they still believe they need to do that shit to beat us.

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I thought for domestic comps you lock in the size of thr pitch at the start of the season

Football Manager makes you do it. Dunno if I’ve ever seen any IRL confirmation of it.

The Socceroos will host Indonesia at Allianz Stadium on Thursday, 20 March 2025 (kick-off 8:00pm AEDT) as part of their Round Three AFC Asian Qualifiers.

First Socceroos match at the SFS since 2017

From Socceroos site.
Football Account Pre-Sale: 10.00am AEDT on Thursday, 12 December 2024.
General Public On-Sale: 4.00pm AEDT Friday, 13 December 2024.

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Probably means we won’t get the Japan game. Melbourne again or maybe Suncorp for that?

Perth please.

Melbourne is a city of tears. Let’s go somewhere else.

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Japan game is in Perth June 5th

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:grin::grin::grin:

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What’s the aprox estimate of Japanese (or expats) in Perth?

Should we expect a big traveling section+locals?

It’s not that big. We are more of a British and South African refuge.

Why did the South African community increase so much in Perth in the 90s?

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Post-apartheid South Africa…