Picking the right Socceroos coach is a must

This one needs to be properly assessed to learn the lessons and compute the type of coach needed going forward.

And where better than on The World Game website, where the educated fan resides?

Looking at the last two years, the core issue is around the quality and type of football played, and whether Australia wants to continue down the same path.

The reaction to many Socceroos matches recently, as well as the Germany game, shows clearly that Australians prefer an attacking, proactive style of football, and for Australia to play true to our sporting culture. One that is, by the way, close to the world’s best when measured per capita across a range of sports.

We play hard but fair, always compete well, have a strong team ethic that ensures the current French farce does not occur, and are never overwhelmed by pressure or expectation.

Australia expects composure under pressure, that’s our dominant culture, and its one that will ultimately see us win the World Cup one day.

Yes, we need to fundamentally change the type of players we produce – this process if underway – and we must learn constantly how to play in attack, with the ball, with greater intelligence, since the Australian spirit may be enough in less sophisticated ball sports but not in football.

Technique and brains wins the day, a clear message from this tournament as demonstrated by Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and probably Germany in the end.

The mantra from coach and players alike has been that results are foremost and nothing else matters, but this is actually not true.

Our football must always reflect us, all 22 million, this is the only way to ultimately win, and the evidence is clear of Australia’s distaste for caution with the recent Uzbekistan, Oman and New Zealand matches being only half full of spectators, at a time when the game is at its greatest peak.

Australia wants attacking football, this must be the first principal of our national football style, and of course this affects the selection of coach.

Just back to the players for a moment. Many say, after the cautious and often uninspired football of recent times, that it is all the players are capable of. I have always disagreed, and do so now.

Australian players are highly adaptable, even though not as tactically well educated as some nations, and there are two historical examples of why a coach with an attacking system of play can bring the best out of our boys.

Systems of play support players and bring the best out of them, especially nations like ours with solid professionals and few players of technical brilliance.

Terry Venables in 1997 had the Socceroos playing a highly advanced attacking system, not unlike the Dutch, with a rotational exploitation of space that he obviously learned at Barcelona, and which I explain in great detail in Fozz on Football, including how he specifically coached the players to understand the patterns.

How do we know it supported the players? Because it wasn’t just the first 11 that played well, the home-based team also was able to play their best football under the system, and players like Robbie Hooker, Matt Bingley and Kris Trajanovski all excelled because every player knew both their role, and that of every team-mate, well ahead of receiving the ball.

Playing under Venables was not physically demanding, but mentally demanding, and this is what top level football should be.

Hiddink also had the players well organized systematically with and without the ball, and as Mark Viduka told TWG recently, “when there is no confusion, there is confidence”.

Setting up a team defensively is the easy part, any international coach can do so. But coaching a system of movement to enable many passing options for the ball carrier, which has players moving well ahead of the moment of the pass, in the highest level of football is what Australia requires now.

Our 4-2-3-1 makes Australia hard to break down but has provided few options with the ball against good teams, except to counter-attack, and only when ahead have the Socceroos been able to gain control of a game.

Against world level teams, however, getting ahead is the hard part. And it is the poor performances of Australia’s “B” team, or home-based players, that show a lack of system in attack over the last two years.

We must focus on controlling the ball and the game, pressing from the front (which can be tempered in the extreme heat of Asia), but particularly concentrate on giving our national teams a systematic plan of movement in possession that has players moving back and forward between the lines, like so many teams at this World Cup.

Teams without a system rely on individuals and we cannot yet do this for another twenty years.

So the next coach, then, should have an attacking philosophy and have demonstrated that his team(s) move in synergy, in constant patterns that are repeatable and therefore have been coached, that enables his teams to keep the ball, provide options for the possessor, and to penetrate an opposing defence.

And when we say an attacking philosophy, I mean a coach who believes in attack as the best form of defence, and plays proactively despite the scale of the match.

These are few and far between.

The other reason the coach needs to truly believe in attack is that we cannot sustain in Australia another national boss constantly talking about results being more important than the football played, especially when so many Aussies have watched and thought, ‘that football is boring’, despite qualification.

We need a national coach who talks constantly about the importance of attack, of taking the initiative, of using skill, of players with technical quality, because all of these messages fit perfectly within Australia’s plans for future success, and dovetail with the National Curriculum.

It makes no sense to have a national plan that calls for proactive football, and a national team that sits back and gets outplayed.

So far, there is one coach here in South Africa who fits the bill after two games – Marcelo Bielsa.

Chile qualified second in CONMEBOL playing attacking football, scored the most goals in South American qualifying and has played well in its first two World Cup matches.

Moreover, it is important that our coach shows he can make more of his players, that the team movements bring success, not that he is reliant on one or two great individuals.

Chile has some great young talent, yes, but its use of the width of the park, its 3-4-3 system that fits perfectly within the National Curriculum as a variation of 4-3-3, penetrating runs from midfield forwards (like that of Portugal’s Raul Mereiles against Korea DPR), and the forward back into midfield on angles, shows clearly the sort of repeatable, well-coached and coordinated movements that Australia should be looking for.

The 4-3-3 system in the new curriculum is the right one for youth development but so far, with both the Socceroos and Under 20’s, the movements are too predictable and players too static for my taste. A system is just the start, it is the movements within that defines the football, and ultimately the results.

Australia cannot afford to rely on the 1 v 1 theory of the Dutch wingers, which is why I prefer the 4-3-3 of Spain or Barcelona with wingers coming inside, and we must always look to send numbers into attack to utilize player movements to penetrate, rather than player brilliance.

The wide midfielders of Chile have been superb at joining the attack immediately to make overloads out wide, as the central players take up excellent positions between defenders for the diagonal ball between the defence to penetrate.

For example, when Alexis Sanchez gets the ball on Chile’s right flank, even though he is a high quality attacking player, he is not expected to beat a player every time but also can play penetrating passes to players entering spaces between defenders, and this shows it is not reliant just on its individual players to create.

These synergistic movements closely replicate those of Germany against Australia in between the lines, and are what our national teams currently lack.

Chile’s defence is active and aggressive on the ball immediately, which suits Australia’s mentality, and it looks to win the ball as soon as possible, not coming back behind the ball to let the opponent play.

There is good interchange of players throughout the team, with only two of the three defenders staying at the rear, and the left and right wide players coming inside and out, back to the ball and beyond the defence, making the task of marking them extremely difficult.

Chile has had more shots in two games than most teams muster in ten, and only its poor conversion ratio of one goal to twenty shots has meant low scores, but most of its shots are genuine chances that have been created by penetration, not long range bombs by a team devoid of attacking ideas.

All in all, very good signs for what Australia wants to become, and good signs of a coach that could instruct our next generation, not just rel