Aha, no, I have always thought he was pony. Just that he did a few things in the first game after you had called him the weakness in our backline :P
Aha, no, I have always thought he was pony. Just that he did a few things in the first game after you had called him the weakness in our backline :P
Forgot to record it, watching the highlights now. Don't know if they're an accurate reflection of the game, but it looks like we made more than enough scoring opportunities to win.
Turkey's first goal - ball was hit very well, but surely Izzo should be getting a hand on that. Surely.
Turkey's second goal - similar story, his positioning was what let him down here. Good chip, but the mistake is always with the keeper in those situations, getting chipped from that position is really U14 stuff.
That said, the defence didn't make it any easier for him, in the first two games I saw the backline was equally as bad.
Anyway disregarding all that I thought it was a very good tournament for us. We're clearly leagues ahead of where we were at in previous years. It's bordering on a cliche these days, but give it time and I can see us becoming a real force at this level.
I thought we were pretty average on the whole. We had an relatively easy group, and came last. The skill set we are striving for is still a way off. I actually thought they played like the Jets, and I can hear Dutchy now, "we had the majority of possession but lacked something in the final third". Anyway as they say, the table doesn't lie.
That being said our football is improving albeit that is tempered by our rivals also improving.
The amount of money and resources we devote to developing professional standard footballers is not enough and the structures of the game across this country are wrong to achieve anything of note at this level.
Good news is we are heading in the right direction towards starting to remedy this.
Yeah, like when we made the semis of the World Youth Cup in '91.
Moving forward and all that.
Right, ok. Did you actually watch any of the last 3 U-20 tournaments that we've participated in? Did you watch this group at the U-17 World Cup?
Please don't try and tell me that you think they haven't improved from these tournaments.
As for the earlier comment about the table not lying, seriously, who gives a **** about the results in the U-20 World Cup? It has been and always will be a nothing tournament in that regard. At the end of the day no one remembers or gives a shit about whether such-and-such a team made it out of the group stage or not. I would much rather we used this tournament as a stepping-stone for what we do in the senior team than scrap for a result here and there purely for the sake of getting a result.
I watched the last U20 WC and watched the most recent U17 WC, and I'm very impressed with where we're heading tbh.
We have some great young players, and I truly hope that a heap of these young guys are our starters for the 2018 WC after they kick on even further.
It's also worth noting that if my tallying skills are correct - out of the 21 player squad, only 5 play outside of the A-League. I love me a strong A-League
We seem to be prepared to write these tournaments off as development. What about we start to develop winners. I would have thought having prepare and play in knock out tournaments at a world youth competition would be first class development and preparation for the future.
Well let me see....In the 1980's ( tornament held in Australia, cannot remember exact year) we made it out of the group. In 1990's in Portugal we made it to the quarterfinals to be beaten by Portugal who went on to win it. We have been going down hill ever since.
Yes sure we play better now, why wouldn't we, the problem is so is every body else and what is even more disturbing is EVERYBODY else has improved exponentially (spelling) while we have made modest improvements.
There was a time like back in those years mentioned above when the only teams that could beat us were the first team nations ie your Germany's, Argentina, Brazil etc and occassionaly we would beat them.
Now we can't even beat the second team nations like Turkey, El Salvador and Columbia. (NO disrespect to those nations)