Biggest and most competitive sport on the planet mate. Wake up.
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World Cup 2022 official thread (incl. remaining Qualifiers!)
- Thread starter AngryAnt
- Start date
Biggest and most competitive sport on the planet mate. Wake up.
this is where i need the fishing bait emoji. How else would you expect me to respond to TBR's post?
And honestly, the word "Soccer" in Australia has negative connotations. To me it’s a reference to the ethnic tensions of the old NSL. Supporters of the domestic game refer to the NSL (or bitter fans of the old NSL) as “Old Soccer” and the A-League as “New Football.”
Sorry PT, but I don’t know a lot about the lower tiers of Dutch football. But your description sounds close to the mark.
Which does bring me back to a point I mentioned earlier… Football Australia has been trying to develop a Dutch Philosophy to coaching for the best part of 20 years. We have had Dutch technical directors in the past. This style is very technical and robotic and doesn’t allow kids to use their creativity and flare.
Many of us believe this is one of the main reasons behind the lack of quality youth coming through. Many experts in Australia have been calling for Football Australia to dump this philosophy for a while now.
Some would argue its Harry Souttar
Australias coaching does seem to be where English football was 20 years or so ago. The golden generation as they were known then, were very good players in the Premier League but the style of play at the time in the PL was very different to within Europe and in South America. They then invested in St Georges Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_George's_Park_National_Football_Centre
English football is now starting to reap the benefits of this with more technically adept youngsters playing our game. However good Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard were, you look at their technical ability compared to say Mason Mount, Declan Rice, Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham and many others, they aren't even comparable. Its why I'm the most optimistic I have been since 1996 when it comes to England at the World Cup.
Now I'm not sure Australian football could afford to build something of this size, but even something at a smaller level would be a good move forwards and centralise a lot of high level coaching within Australia.
Your brain would explode when a match is decided on a dodgy penalty. Great decision by referee but how crap that it decides the match.
Maybe. Although even allowing for the fact that football is no.1 (and that clearly isn't the case in Australia) we have a population of 26mil and GDP per head in the top few countries in the world. Croatia only 4mil people and far poorer on a GDP per capita basis. And from some articles I read, they don't have access to bells and whistles training infrastructure that a lot of the top nations have. Tend to rely simply on talent and good coaching. Mind you, Australia wouldn't be the only country wondering what Croatia does right. A lot of footballing nations ahead of us, where the game is no.1, that have not consistently reached the same levels as the Croatians.
I wonder how their registered player numbers would compare to ours? Although raw numbers only tell part of the picture. It's the culture of the sport that adds so much also. The amount of kids spending hours upon hours learning their craft in street or park matches, away from organised competition or training. That sort of thing......
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Hook, line and sinker here.
Speaking of...
Is that because Australian soccer loses talent to other sports?
On the negative connotations of "soccer", dunno. No negatives for me when I began playing as a seven-year-old - plenty in the white-breads I grew up with calling it Wogball though. I reckon my brother and I were two of very few at our club who weren't the sons of migrants, but plenty of those kids had Scottish, English fathers etc. and weren't wogs.
I always thought they were overrated domestic darlings who failed England time and again and should have been turfed for Scholes and LeTessier.
I remember back in my young days often hearing reference to Olyroos players having been through the AIS programme. The era of Viduka and co. I believe some not only went on to play internationals for Australia, but also a few went on to be capped at international level for the likes of Croatia and Serbia (if eligible through parents). Does the AIS programme still exist? Could it be reborn into a slimmed down version of (at an appropriate scale to our resourcing) the St.Georges Park facility? I mean the AIS campus these days sits there as a virtual ghost town for significant periods. Could be far better utilised. It would need the addition of an indoor pitch and training centre (which there is plenty of land adjacent to the existing football training pitches for this). But apart form that everything is there, in place ready to go. Good, efficient use of already existing facilities, with a small level of extra investment for some further infrastructure.
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Should I respond with a TBR type thesis?......nuh.
Man, you soccer guys are touchy. I guess that explains all the riots and flares and such. Here I was thinking it was just cause the game is so boring.
YOTT posed a question about why there wasn't much interest in the game and I answered. Afraid I have a complete and utter dislike of the sport but it's only the opinion of one man so don't stress too much.
Funnily enough I owe a lot to both soccer and rugby league and I can't stand either game.
Well, personally speaking, my hatred of AFL umpires and your hatred of soccer becomes a 1-1 draw.Man, you soccer guys are touchy. I guess that explains all the riots and flares and such. Here I was thinking it was just cause the game is so boring.
YOTT posed a question about why there wasn't much interest in the game and I answered. Afraid I have a complete and utter dislike of the sport but it's only the opinion of one man so don't stress too much.
Funnily enough I owe a lot to both soccer and rugby league and I can't stand either game.
Hook, line and sinker here.
Speaking of...
Is that because Australian soccer loses talent to other sports?
On the negative connotations of "soccer", dunno. No negatives for me when I began playing as a seven-year-old - plenty in the white-breads I grew up with calling it Wogball though. I reckon my brother and I were two of very few at our club who weren't the sons of migrants, but plenty of those kids had Scottish, English fathers etc. and weren't wogs.
I always thought they were overrated domestic darlings who failed England time and again and should have been turfed for Scholes and LeTessier.
Scholes was a gun, probably one of my favourite England players of all time.
Gerrard could have come become a more complete player IMO, if he had moved abroad and learnt the european style of play as he was the more skillful player between he and Lampard. Thats one of the big things that have changed in the EPL over the last 15 years is the style of play. Its now not really an English league anymore in the traditional sense, in that we used to play fast and direct football. A lot more of that possession game from abroad has been brought in and is helping to develop those younger english players and where technique needs to be even better. Having said all that, Gerrard was never ever going to leave Liverpool so his ability was somewhat capped. They took England as far as we could with that style but at the top end of competition we were just not at the same level as the likes of France, Spain, Brazil etc who were just that much better particularly from a technical aspect which is why against those teams we surrendered so much possession and those teams would just grind us down.
Its a different game for England now with the skill / technical levels that we have.
Australia needs to have generate an overall plan as to how to develop kids from a young age (which is what St Georges Park is and then what pathways that can put into place to get more Australians into a better league. Either that, or actually focus on how to develop the A league to become better. They missed a trick IMO when Man City bought Melbourne City, the year after that happened David Villa played in the A League but its just gone south, south, south since then in terms of attracting quality overseas talent. The fact we are on here discussing the A League as a League 1 quality league, how are Aussies in the A League supposed to cope and take forward Australia as a footballing nation.
The AIS program doesnt exist anymore, and I reckon that has been the cause of a bit of disent. The various states are responsible for development until kids get into young matildas or joeys squads.
i guess in Australia it is hard to centralise any sort of development training until you start to get older and can then only focus on the elite.
a big issue with the development of Australian soccer is schools i reckon.
in "soccer" countries, kids go to school where they play soccer at lunch time, they have sports teachers who know soccer, and if they go to a good school they would have good coaching, and play and train weekly. similar to Aussie Rules, or Rugby, in Australia.
here tho some kids would play at lunch time, byt many would go to school where the sports teacher has no idea, they might have a school team coached by someone who has played a little, but isnt a serious coach, and there is minimal serious school leagues.
this means the only time kids get decent coaching is at club- which for some kids is 1 1 hour session for about 26weeks, and maybe play about 16-20 games a year. the difference is massive.
in "soccer" countries, kids go to school where they play soccer at lunch time, they have sports teachers who know soccer, and if they go to a good school they would have good coaching, and play and train weekly. similar to Aussie Rules, or Rugby, in Australia.
here tho some kids would play at lunch time, byt many would go to school where the sports teacher has no idea, they might have a school team coached by someone who has played a little, but isnt a serious coach, and there is minimal serious school leagues.
this means the only time kids get decent coaching is at club- which for some kids is 1 1 hour session for about 26weeks, and maybe play about 16-20 games a year. the difference is massive.
Brilliant player. Scholes and Giggs were my favourites of the Class of 92. Dunno how Keane justified picking Robson ahead of Scholes in his best United team (or leaving out Cantona).
Le Tissier outrageous some of the things he did. Touch of genius.
At the time, Le Tissier was more competing with Teddy Sheringham rather than the midfielders as he was more that player that played just off the central striker. Sheringham was an awesome player too. I still remember Euro 96 (I was 14 at the time so whilst I kind of remember World Cup 1990 this was my first full involvement with an Intl tournament) and we had a fantastic team for that tournament. Shearer and Sheringham up top. Ince, Gazza, Platt and McManaman central midfield and don't forget Seaman, Adams, Pearce at the back. It was the one tournament I really think England dropped.
This to me was the golden generation, not the one that followed but were provided the term, though I do wish Giggs had continued to play for England (he played for England schoolboys) rather than heading back and playing for Wales.
Yeah, scored some amazing goals. One of those idiosyncratic yet genius players that never really fit into the national team system - he got a few runs but didn't really succeed at that level.
Unfortunately he's also become a mad antivaxxer/conspiracy theory nut on twitter/social media, but hey, still was a good player.
Yeah, did a bit of reading on the way home about the demise of the AIS programme. The articles focussed on how as the A-League teams have established academies of their own, the AIS programme is seen by the powers that be as redundant. Might be true, although could also be a bit of self interest (protecting their own patch) from the A-League teams.
I suppose where my comment came from. The example Posh gave. England’s St.George Park national facility exists concurrently with all of the club academies, seemingly complementing each other. I wonder if there is a way of doing that here with a rebirth of the AIS programme perhaps with a slight different flavour than in the past?
Don't need to watch the full match replay, 120 minutes of goalless footy
, just fast forward to the penalty shoot-out.Thats the exact reason why the St Georges Park facility was developed.
They previously has a facility called Lilleshall in Shropshire, that essentially was made redundant by clubs academies, but they still wanted to develop a proper pathway to continue to help develop from an England perspective also.
I think Australia are 20 years behind England with this.
Man, you soccer guys are touchy. I guess that explains all the riots and flares and such. Here I was thinking it was just cause the game is so boring.
YOTT posed a question about why there wasn't much interest in the game and I answered. Afraid I have a complete and utter dislike of the sport but it's only the opinion of one man so don't stress too much.
Funnily enough I owe a lot to both soccer and rugby league and I can't stand either game.
Opinions are always fine, except the ones I disagree with
