Sports

Where To Now For Australian Football?

The pre-game commentary preamble was still going when Australian defender Bailey Wright fired a pass straight from the kick off to Brazilian Guillano who raced down field and supplied a deft ball to Diego Souza who slammed home the opening goal just 12 seconds in – the quickest goal ever conceded by Australia in an international.

For Australian Keeper, Mitch Langerak, it now means he holds the dubious distinction of having let in the quickest goal in Australian history (12 seconds) as well as the quickest goal in the history of the German Bundesliga after conceding one in nine seconds for Borussia Dortmund against rivals Bayer Leverkusen in 2014.

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What followed was a consummate though not wholly unexpected demolition of Australia featuring some of the best football ever witnessed on our boundless plains. All of it from Brazil, of course.

The question now is, with the Confederations Cup coming up and, more importantly, the tense final two matches in our World Cup qualification bid for Russia 2018, what does the result mean for the immediate future of Australian football?

The 4-0 drubbing by Brazil is not our worst result against the five-time world champs. That came in the form of a 6-0 drubbing in 2013 and there was some cause for optimism amidst the misery. Mostly, that Australia was able to keep Brazil to one goal until the 62nd minute when Thiago Silva pounced on a loose ball inside the five-yard box and headed home Brazil’s second.

Then the floodgates opened. Brazil’s third was, in the word’s of Australian goalkeeping great-turned-Fox Sports commentator, Mark Bosnich, “worth the admission price alone.”

With the ball at the feet of Brazil’s Chelsea midfielder, Willian, a succession of split second touches from he and Paulinho in a shoebox full of space provided rookie Taison with nothing more than the inside of the upright to hit from six yards out. He threaded the needle perfectly to cap a piece of footballing magic that will live long in the memories of Australian footballing purists.

The job doesn’t get much easier in their first match of the Confederations Cup in Russia against the 3rd ranked Germany in four days time.

Speaking afterwards, legendary former-Australian striker, John Aloisi, made the obvious point that the depth is just not there in Australian football right now, due largely to the competition between football codes here (AFL, rugby union and rugby league).

“We’ve got a very small pool; the Brazilians have a bigger pool. The ones that come through usually aren’t just technically good, they’re athletes,” he said.

“The athletes we’ve got coming through usually go to other codes … we haven’t got as many in our game.”

“When you look player for player, they just have players playing at the top level. Our players aren’t. We can talk about tactics, structures, their players are much better than ours at the moment,” he said.

Aloisi also expressed concern that coach Ange Postecoglou would be hard pressed lifting the spirits of the Australian team following the Brazil drubbing. A second in a row at the hands of Germany could see our confidence bottom out precisely when we need it most – the pointy end of the World Cup Qualification campaign.

“That second-half could’ve been anything … the boys will feel down, Ange will be livid, we were torn to pieces in the second-half.

“As a leader, he has to pick them up now because we have an important tournament to go to and we don’t want this to happen at this tournament.

“We want to go there and at least compete.”

Speaking after the game, Australian coach, Ange Postecoglou, refused to buy into the hysteria.

“I guess the first half, apart from the first action where we conceded a silly goal, I thought it wasn’t too bad,” said Postecoglou.

“The boys were disciplined and the boys minimised [Brazil’s] threats and we had a few good moments.

“The second half, I’ll take responsibility.

“We made a lot of changes and looked disjointed and they took advantage of that. And we conceded two from set pieces which we hadn’t done for a while.”

“Getting game time into some guys with players having not played for a long time [was the focus],” Postecoglou said.

“That was the primary thing so everyone over [in Russia] is pretty much together with not much recovery time between games.

“I wanted to make sure they guys who come in can play the game we want to play… Physically we should be ok and hopefully we don’t lose anyone else to injury.”

Of more significance is Australia’s progress in the World Cup Qualifiers where last week they were fortunate to escape with unconvincing 3-2 victory against Saudi Arabia. A midweek 1-1 draw between Japan and Iraq in neutral Tehran, however, has bolstered Australia’s chances of qualifying. With the top two teams set to qualify, Australia remains third in their group behind Japan on 17 points and equal with Saudi Arabia on 16 points though behind by a goal on differential.

Following the Confederations Cup, Australia will face Japan at home on August 31st and finish their qualification campaign against Thailand a week later.

The top two teams in the group, Japan and Saudi Arabia, will play in the final game of the group qualifiers on September 5th following the Saudis qualifier agains the United Arab Emirates on August 31st.

On balance, keeping great, Mark Bosnich points out that we shouldn’t read too much into the loss against Brazil. They’re simply in another league.

“(The game unravelling) coincides with this: you’re playing a team two-three classes above you. When they want to play like that they’re going to create chances.

“Without Mitch Langerak, it could have been seven or eight (to nil).

“They should just be happy it is 4-0…

“You talk about ‘that’s not what Ange expects’, well, I think it’s time he dimmed his expectations quite some bit,” he said.