Quote Originally Posted by plague View Post
Man we do a good job of saying "wow these people are so much better than us" then go home and sit on our hands.

The past few years of ACL campaigns and the nation team should provoke an absolute outrage from football head honchos yet we all seem to be "well Arzani is injured and Arnold is a great man manager".

It really is pathetic sometimes how low we set our bar.............and still always seem unable to reach it.

What is pertinent to look at is last night showed how many things that HAL and Aussie football are failing in that we can and should be fixing and that the HAL is actually failing us

Lets not just bury our heads in the sand and say the Japs have more money better players than us as that is naive

Lets look at some things that we can improve

Defending for a start. The standard of Aussie defending is not good enough period..Now what exact skill set do ypu need to be world standard at defendimg ?? Because you dont find it in the FFA curriculum of Keep Ball

This is an area that we can easily improve in drastically which would make us more competitve


Fitness condidering the Japs were in pre season and we well into ours the fitness levels between those sides are mot.good enough. Our blokes are full time pros sports science in Oz is world class. Why exactly are we not fitter than them or on par

Speed to the ball- The anticipation to the ball by the Japanese was chalk and cheese between us. They were 1 step quicker to the ball than us all night long. If it was about to be free their reaction to the opportunities was a second quicker than ours
This should not be the case

Pressing. The organisation and speed and discipline to pressing by the Japanese put us under the pump because under the Dutch Mango suckers we believe in keeping the ball at all costs but also refuse to dribble or play risky balls forward. This can be noticed by Dimi not having 400 touches a play last night as he didnt get the time on the ball. Contrast this with our defensive press and how little pressure we put them under.This is an area where we can improve out of sight in

Goal Keeping There is no reason in the world we cant have world class keepers
Bozza Schwarzer Gypo Ryan we can produce keepers that can be world class.The skill sets required aint the same required to e a Messi or CR7 or Griff. So why are we constantly seeing opponents in ACL Socceroos games with keepers who are bettwr than the sjit we have in the HAL

The HAL and FFA are letting us down drastically.

Another point is the AFC have a Europa League comp. Why the **** are Australian clubs not playing in it on top of the ACL??