Last night saw Australia play Denmark at the Ruimsig Stadium, Roodepoort, South Africa. The result was Australia 1 - Denmark 0, which, on paper, looks like a good result, and a win is always what you hope for, but the game itself didn't fill me with hope for the three games Australia has coming up. Here's hoping that the game on Saturday against the US finally sees the team gelling and finding that much needed rhythm.
Something that should help find that rhythm will be the announcemen tonight of the final 23 man squad. Of the five to be culled, Pim has already mentioned Oar and Holland only going to South Africa in a training capacity, with my money on the other three to be culled being Galekovich, Lowry and Garcia. This leaves us with our 23 man squad for the 2010 World Cup, but it's not a list of players that are instilling that hope in me that the 2006 squad did. I'm hoping the boys can prove me wrong in the final warm up game, but I go into this World Cup with a lot more trepidation than the last.
I'll come back later tonight to update the squad, the announcement is set for 1930 AEST.
UPDATE
Right, so I wasn't far off with my picks, with Galekovich, Holland, Oar, Lowry and Williams being the five players cut from the final 23.
The final squad of 23 now looks like this:
Goalkeepers: Adam Federici, Brad Jones, Mark Schwarzer
Defenders: Michael Beauchamp, David Carney, Scott Chipperfield, Mark Milligan, Craig Moore, Lucas Neill, Luke Wilkshire
Midfielders: Mark Bresciano, Tim Cahill, Jason Culina, Brett Emerton, Richard Garcia, Vincenzo Grella, Brett Holman, Mile Jedinak, Carl Valeri, Dario Vidosic
Forwards: Joshua Kennedy, Harry Kewell, Nikita Rukavytsya
From what Pim's been playing, and the system he likes to use, I would guess that the run on squad for the cup would look something like this:
Schwarzer
Wilkshire Neill Moore Chipperfield
Grella Culina
Emerton Cahill Kewell
Kennedy
I do know, however, that Pim was talking about putting Kewell up front, which may open up the left side to Bresciano or even maybe Vidosic. All I know is that I'm starting to get excited about the cup now that we have a final squad announced, still a bout cautious, but starting to get over it.
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unfortunately the match against the USA (as long as the usa play a near full strength team) will be our hardest match of all the friendlies.
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, they're only friendlies after all, and realistically - mean next to nothing
Yeah, that's what all my English friends say when I bring up the fact that the last time Australia played England in football we beat them 3-1. It was just a friendly, no-one takes notice of friendlies. Haha, anyway, I agree, the US game will be the best test of the squad before the cup, and we have something to prove after Bruce Arena's kind words about prior to 2006.
ReplyDeleteAustralia bet England 3-1? Really? You'd think you Aussies would mention that occasionally!
ReplyDelete;-)