Indonesia facing the unknown

It appears the Socceroos will know much more about their opponents than the Indonesians will.

Socceroos assistant coach Graham Arnold has had a good look at Indonesia during the recent Suzuki Cup (which is ASEAN's regional championship) and will have a firm idea of what to expect when he takes charge of the team on the bench, in place of the suspended national coach Pim Verbeek.

The Dutchman will serve the first of a three-match ban after he was sent off in the match for third place at the 2007 Asian Cup while he was Korea Republic coach.

“I cannot prepare for the match until I watch a video of a recent Australia game,” Indonesia coach Benny Dolo, 48, said in Muscat, where he led his team to a goalless draw with Oman in the first match of Group B.

“All I know about Australia is that they are supposed to be the strongest team in the group but I need more information about the team. I’ve got no idea how to play the Australians, whether with four in the middle or five.”

Unless he was foxing, Dolo appeared to have done very little homework on the Australian team because he also said he wanted Indonesia to “play with a fighting spirit against such an experienced team comprising many stars like Tim Cahill who play in Europe”.

The suspicion is that Dolo amazingly did not realise that the Australians would not be making use of their Europe-based players in the Jakarta match until he was told that his team ranked 144th in the world basically would face an A-League selection.

He then spoke cryptically about “no coach in the world wanting to lose any match and that any player would give his best for his coach” presumably meaning that he expected the Australians would be hard to beat regardless of who’s playing.

“Everybody knows how good and fast Australia are,” Dolo said.

“They also have a good coach who uses good tactics. They can control games and when they need to they go and score three or four goals like they did to Qatar.

“Of course, we would be happy with a draw same as we are happy with the draw in Muscat. Oman are also a strong team.

"Against the Australians we will be at home and our supporters should help us a lot.

“The weather will favour us too and I hope that we can play with the right mentality and get a good result.”

Dolo refused to single out any players in his squad for special mention even though hit-man Bambang Pamungkas is considered one of the finest and most lethal finishers in South-East Asia.

“I do not have favourite players,” he said. “They are all the same for me. You have big names like Cahill but in Indonesia the selected players are all of the same quality.

“Teamwork is important to a team like ours especially since we have not had a good preparation.”