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The Olyroos (Australian U-23s) Thread


Shahanga
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55 minutes ago, Thrillhouse said:

especially when Wales makes it
no idea why Mitch duke was selected as one of the overage players 

The only reasons I can think of including Duke was that JMac didn't want to go or that Arnold wants to see how well he performs at the international level. That is, extra practice for Duke.

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1 hour ago, NewConvert said:

The only reasons I can think of including Duke was that JMac didn't want to go or that Arnold wants to see how well he performs at the international level. That is, extra practice for Duke.

Ultimately Arnold loves what Duke brings. I suspect he likes that he’s a target man. During the qualifiers tournament Duke was first choice ahead of Maclaren.

Probably for me the really interesting selections are:

Caleb Watts (19, at a Premier League club, kid sounds promising)

Daniel Arzani (mate, this is a lifeline, don’t fuck it up)

Ruon Tongyik (GA knows he could be a big player for Oz if he continues his growth).

Call me biased but if we are going to get anywhere at this tournament it’ll be on the back of Atkinson and Metcalfe.

Edited by Shahanga
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Got a 1-0 win in the 2nd friendly vs NZ. Early goal to Duke.

Hard to imagine we’ll do much in the Olympics (though I don’t know if the others in our group are at full strength, but I assume they’ll be close to). Interesting thing is what will happen if Metcalfe and Atkinson have strong tournaments.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Frustrating loss to Spain. They really showed their class and we couldn’t really lay a glove on them. Not a surprise given most of their players are starters in La Liga. We were undone by a terrific cross and header from two seriously good players. 

Atkinson was very good. If only he didn’t have that brain fade toward the end. 

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26 minutes ago, Harrison said:

Frustrating loss to Spain. They really showed their class and we couldn’t really lay a glove on them. Not a surprise given most of their players are starters in La Liga. We were undone by a terrific cross and header from two seriously good players. 

Atkinson was very good. If only he didn’t have that brain fade toward the end. 

Just need to park the bus against Egypt and we'll be ok.

It's been good to azarni get some consistent game time.feels like it's been forever since I've seen him last play.

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they were talking in the broadcast about the different valuations and total wage bill of both sides.  

what that says to me is (1) we are more competitive than we realise, and (2) the A League is way better than what most (particularly the general public and the Aussie media) think it is.

we were out classed for the a chunk of the game, but battled away well.  the game against the Argentines is a game and a result to be proud of.  it feels like we have had a decade or so of lean youth development (youth products coming through).

not any more 

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1 hour ago, Harrison said:

Frustrating loss to Spain. They really showed their class and we couldn’t really lay a glove on them. Not a surprise given most of their players are starters in La Liga. We were undone by a terrific cross and header from two seriously good players. 

Atkinson was very good. If only he didn’t have that brain fade toward the end. 

Atkinson has had an outstanding tournament. Argentina basically resorted to kicking him as their method to counter him. He’s going to draw the attention of scouts.

We are seriously going to miss him and Duke though against Egypt.

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22 minutes ago, Shahanga said:

Atkinson has had an outstanding tournament. Argentina basically resorted to kicking him as their method to counter him. He’s going to draw the attention of scouts.

We are seriously going to miss him and Duke though against Egypt.

We will definitely miss them and Mcgree. 

That being said, we only need a draw to go through. Surely we can manage that.

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13 hours ago, Harrison said:

Frustrating loss to Spain. They really showed their class and we couldn’t really lay a glove on them. Not a surprise given most of their players are starters in La Liga. We were undone by a terrific cross and header from two seriously good players. 

Atkinson was very good. If only he didn’t have that brain fade toward the end. 

The S[anish Olympic team is valued higher than the sum of all the A League players. Probably, Pedri is, on his own

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1 minute ago, kingofhearts said:

Horrendous stuff.We don't even look like scoring

We started horrendously but improved to average after the first 20 minutes. Still making a lot of poor passes that become giveaways though.

To be honest the score flatters us I think. We’ll need to improve again to get back on level terms.

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Really, really frustrating. Don’t even know where to begin. Apart from a few flashes of good play from Arzani and Tilio, we were poor. Not sure what was happening in that first half and it didn’t improve until late when we were playing with urgency. 

Metcalfe looked spent and was doing nothing. Baccus came in and was meh. King was ordinary but looked tired. No Atkinson cost us badly as we lost almost all thrust down the right. Deng moving there wasn’t great but centrally is solid. Glover turning the ball straight to them for the second was terrible keeping. He does some really bad, fundamental errors as a keeper. D’Agostino a one trick pony. Arnold putting a big lump up top was straight out of the 80s. Bizarre stuff. 

Normal service resumed I guess for Australian football. I had hope we’d get through but just not smart enough or good enough at these tournaments. Great to beat Argentina and we battled hard against Spain but this loss was a gut punch. Tough group but it feels like we let this slip.

Edited by Harrison
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Fundamentally we are just not good enough. (For now).

Beating Argentina was a complete aberration and probably the luckiest result I've seen in years. Don't get me wrong it was awesome but we should've lost on balance. Against Spain we basically played for a draw.

At no stage during any game did we look like we were the better side, but ultimately tournaments aren't about style just results look at NZ.

My biggest take from the Olympics was the group did amazing to qualify they basically didn't play together for 2 years and then ran their guts out but were just not good enough, and all basically A League players.

I'm hoping when and if the League does start this will be the beginning of a new era at the national level where we start to get back to where we were in mid 2000s.

From our perspective we had Glover Metcalfe and Atkinson as core players and Tilio starting the last game can't be sniffed at. 

As a club we have come along way .

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I couldn't stomach to watch teh second half. My take from the campaign was that Arnold was testing who could make the next leap and for me it was Atkinson, Deng and Metcalfe. There were some serviceable players such as Soutta and King but the rest were plodders. Depth? not much.

Last nights team just had no desire and no intent. Either something happened in the last 48 hours or basically the team just had mentally checked out.

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One of the problems was 3 games in heat in a week. We needed to rotate the squad but lacked the depth to do so. When we couldn’t get anything against Spain (I’m not in the “we played defensive camp”, rather we were comprehensively out played) we were in big trouble.

When I look back to 2016 we’ve come a long way. Qualifying isn’t easy and we did so and won a group game. Even so we still need better players coming through, hopefully they are at a younger age.

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4 hours ago, Jovan said:

Fundamentally we are just not good enough. (For now).

Beating Argentina was a complete aberration and probably the luckiest result I've seen in years. Don't get me wrong it was awesome but we should've lost on balance. Against Spain we basically played for a draw.

At no stage during any game did we look like we were the better side, but ultimately tournaments aren't about style just results look at NZ.

My biggest take from the Olympics was the group did amazing to qualify they basically didn't play together for 2 years and then ran their guts out but were just not good enough, and all basically A League players.

I'm hoping when and if the League does start this will be the beginning of a new era at the national level where we start to get back to where we were in mid 2000s.

From our perspective we had Glover Metcalfe and Atkinson as core players and Tilio starting the last game can't be sniffed at. 

As a club we have come along way .

Better to look at the positives, I agree. Let's put it in perspective. Some big names are out too - France, Germany and Argentina.

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11 hours ago, Shahanga said:

One of the problems was 3 games in heat in a week. We needed to rotate the squad but lacked the depth to do so. When we couldn’t get anything against Spain (I’m not in the “we played defensive camp”, rather we were comprehensively out played) we were in big trouble.

When I look back to 2016 we’ve come a long way. Qualifying isn’t easy and we did so and won a group game. Even so we still need better players coming through, hopefully they are at a younger age.

Well Qatar isn't a cool weather climate either. Although I don't know whether it is humid or not. And we'll find out whether it is possible to air con a stadium.

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  • 2 months later...

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