Victory in Melbourne 

Whilst everyone has been sinking their collective boots into the Socceroos and Pim Verbeek (myself included) after their poor performance against Germany maybe we should put some perspective on things. We should spare a thought for the fans of Chile, a football mad nation (unlike ourselves) who have had to wait 48 years between wins at the World Cup. For us it has only been four years since our one and only World Cup win, that’s right four years. For what’s it worth, I was pretty impressed with the performance of my second team in the World Cup and it is the subject of my latest blog for 442. Also one must spare a thought for the fans of Greece, a country and football nation that has contributed much to the Australian footballing landscape, have had to wait until 2010 to see their team pick up their first ever point and win and score their first ever goal at a World Cup. Certainly, puts thing into perspective doesn’t it.

Qualifying for a tournament is one thing, but actually performing in a tournament is a completely different thing. And that’s what we learned last night as the Socceroos crashed to a 4-0 defeat in Durban at the hands of Germany.

In a similar situation four years ago against an opponent of a similar stature to Germany (namely Brazil) the Socceroos probably played their best game of the tournament despite going down 2-0. The reason why we did so well is because we took the game to our opposition on the day and didn’t take a backward step.

Contrast that to the game against Germany earlier this morning where Pim Verbeek telegraphed his intention from the time he announced that the Socceroos would be starting their match without a recognised striker. He may have called it a 4-4-2 but in all reality it was a 4-6-0 with both Garcia and Cahill playing as advanced midfielders/strikers.

So without a ball being kicked we had already handed the advantage to our opposition. If you are playing the best team in the group shouldn’t you be playing your best team in response and the decision not to give either Kewell or Kennedy a run was truly mindboggling.

The decision to play Tim Cahill and Richard Garcia as ’strikers’ smacked of tactical naivety by Verbeek at worst and clutching at straws at best. Both players are ill-suited to the role and Verbeek should have known this from Cahill’s performance in that role against Japan during qualification. Why take your best player and play him out of position?

Two of our better performers were the returning Brett Emerton and the ever dependable Luke Wilkshire who both patrolled the right-hand side of the pitch. However, a lot of their efforts were wasted as when they got into good positions to get the ball into the box there were never enough bodies to really take advantage of their good work.

Credit has been and should be given to the Germans for their performance with Mesut Ozil being outstanding as he ran the show from the midfield. He appeared to have heaps of space in which to display his considerable talent despite the fact that the Socceroos were playing with five in their midfield.

So with that out of the way let’s hope Pim reverts to the formula that provided much success during qualification. There’s that old adage, if it broke . . .

Getting the three points against Central Coast on Saturday night was almost sufficient payback for our two home defeats against the Mariners.

The match highlighted that our tactics in our previous two encounters were way off the mark. Straight from the kick off you could see that the Victory wouldn’t be sucked into trying to match the physicality of the Mariners. If it wasn’t for some incorrect calls from the linesman we may very well have hit the lead much earlier than we did.

The three goals were brilliant examples of great team goals and surely Thompson’s role in two of the three surely would have caught the eye of Pim Verbeek, who was watching from the stands.

Another who may have caught his eye and the eye of many others would have been Mitchell Langerak. Since getting his opportunity after Glen Moss was “rested”, Langerak has made the position his own. On Saturday night, he pulled off a number of great saves and we could be seeing Moss spending an extended period on the bench with performances like that.

For more of my thoughts on the game and my gentle swipe at Lawrie McKinna’s tweeting, check out my latest 442 blog.