Wonder why Sapreet Singh wasn’t in the squad.? bit of a golden era for the NZ national team if it also includes him.
Wonder why Sapreet Singh wasn’t in the squad.? bit of a golden era for the NZ national team if it also includes him.
I think he was injured late in the season that’s why
Agree Peru is very well coached. I didn’t watch the match, but I wouldn’t put a lot of weight on the score line. Remember they only drew 0-0 with NZ in the first leg of the play off last World Cup, playing very conservatively before turning it on at home for a comfortable win and likewise over Australia.
The team is their Golden Generation, but being a one-off match, they might struggle with expectations … Cueva’s penalty miss at 0-0 versus Denmark would have made a massive difference but he just choked.
Full disclosure - I’ll barrack for the Aussies except when they play Peru!
Arnold is 100% going to play Hrustic as a 10/ second striker just like he did against Japan, and he’ll be so isolated again rendering him useless. Thats the main detriment of Rogic being out really. He needs to be playing deeper and on the ball as much as possible as he’s really the only way we are going to unlock a team that isn’t an arsey set piece.
If anything we should be playing McGree in that role just purely for his energy and he can actually finish if given a chance.
Can’t imagine what that’s like
And who says football in this country never gets any media coverage…
The headline doesn’t do the article justice. I found the comments interesting from people who clearly have kids in the system (sap, nyl). It’s a system that discards a lot of potential talent and focuses a whole lot on a very few players - especially those who develop early to fit the mould.
I can’t say that I agree with Sticca and find his comments about lack of club loyalty a bit ironic coming from a player agent.
I find it ironic that it is the old NSL clubs charging thousands in their NPL academies yet are the loudest in shit bagging football in Australia.
I’m surprised that no one mentioned the change in FIFA rules RE: minors.
Of the Golden Generation Viduka would be one of the few that played substantially in the NSL and went O/S direct to a first team? Maybe Popovic and Emerton too, but the latter only because Kewell took the one potential spot at Leeds iirc.
So many of them went O/S young and developed while training at much higher levels. With so few able to go before 18 now, requiring the passport or to be moving in conjunction with a parental career, they stay here in the relative comfort of the A-Liga.
It’s obviously so much harder to make the step up when moving later, having by-passed Euro youth setups, and being expected to go straight into a squad as the finished article. We can probably count the number of guys who’ve gone through the A-League to start regularly in Europe on one hand.
Emmo didnt have the right passport otherwise he would have gone at the same time as Kewell.
Personally I think it’s more down to our relative size.
Once you subtract the kids who go to AFL, Union and League, we are more like a European country of 5-7million population.
Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Norway, Ireland, Croatia size.
Every now and then you have a good generation but it won’t be consistent.
And agree expensive junior academies don’t help. Money from the senior levels, particularly national team, should be going into junior development, not the other way around.
Have often thought they’re a good aspiration for us.
Shows what can be done with a comparable football population base.
I don’t think that many of the 2006 WC squad left all that early. Cahill, Neill, Moore moved just before they turned 18.
I think it’s only Kewell, Aloisi, Wilkshire (just) who moved before 17?
You may be right, my memory of 2006 was destroyed by too many steins in Kaiserslautern.
But they probably all went younger than is the norm (early 20’s) these days. Only Mooy at the 2nd attempt and Ryan have gone onto big leagues, then a big rung down to those in lower tiers.
I checked this stuff out not too long ago, because I just assumed that the best players just went straight over to Europe in their early teen years to get the best training for their development. As far as I remember, around half of our 2006 squad had played at least a season of NSL or A-League before moving overseas, maybe more.
Promising kids may still do a season or two of ALM before getting picked up by an overseas club to continue their development. That hasn’t really changed since even our Golden Generation years. The change in FIFA rules just makes it harder to go overseas at age 15 like Harry Kewell did.
You’d say the gutting of the AIS a while back really hurt every elite sport in Australia, and has perhaps done more damage to our short-to-medium term future than we previously thought. While many of the A-League clubs are doing their best to develop young talent, their systems still have a fair way to go before consistently bringing through players who can make it in decent-to-good European leagues.
Sainsbury and Taggert out with injury
Very few kids in Australia play rugby league or union. We are not haemorrhaging to them. Many more play AFL but still many fewer than play our game, and AFL is weak in eg NSW. There are all sorts of indicators and sources etc of data collected - a few below - but the picture is clear. We would not be comparable to a country of 5 million but to one of c. 15 million, at least. We have a big enough population base to do better than we are doing now but even much stronger countries miss out on 'WC qualifying sometimes, and sometimes this is because they lose to much weaker teams (eg Italy to North Macedonia)
Participation statistics and trends | Clearinghouse for Sport)%20participated%20in%20organised%20sport.
https://australiansportscamps.com.au/blog/most-popular-team-sports-for-australian-kids/
Can’t wait to see our world cup hopes on the back of Mitch Duke again
Surely that’s just code for “they’re in Sydney for their medicals”.