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.
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
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.
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.
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