Dutch Courage Looms for Socceroos

October 8, 2009

Having already qualified for the 2010 World Cup, Australia has a friendly against the Netherlands this weekend. The two sides played before the last World Cup and have built up a healthy rivalry. This has been boosted by the heavy influx of Dutch coaches into Australian football.

The Dutch side is still be to finalised. Andre Ooijer and Robin van Persie aren’t flying as their wives are both heavily pregnant and there have been injuries to Ibrahim Afellay and Gregory van der Wiel which has seen them pull out. Afellay hurt his ankle while playing for PSV last weekend while van der Wiel received some concussion while playing for Ajax against Roda JC.

Into the side comes Real Madrid midfielder Rafael van der Vaart and Stuttgart defender Khalid Boulahrouz. It shows how strong the Dutch side is when this is the calibre of the replacements. The Netherlands has great depth as can be seen by the rest of the squad who is coming to Australia.
New Everton signing, John Heitinga will get to play against Everton team-mate Tim Cahill. Likewise Glenn Loovens of Celtic will be able to match wits against Scott McDonald.

Other big names in the Dutch squad include Dirk Kuyt, Ryan Babel and Klaas Jan Huntelaar. Because of this, soccer betting has the Dutch as favorites.

Following this game, Australia has a huge Asian Cup qualifier against Oman. Any thoughts that they could coast through qualifying were put to bed when Australia only collected one point from its first two games. It sits in last spot although a good win against Oman would get its qualifying campaign back on track.

Oman won’t be a walkover. In World Cup qualifying it finished third in its Third Round group behind Japan and Bahrain and in front of Thailand. It won two games, lost two and drew two.

It qualified for the last Asian Cup and was in Australia’s group along with Iraq and Thailand. It almost defeated
Australia who only drew thanks to a 92^nd minute goal to Tim Cahill.

The return leg will be in Muscat in November. If Australia can take six points from these next two games they will be well placed. Not only will they move to 7 and have kept Oman to 4 but Indonesia and Kuwait will also play each other twice and thus take points away from each other.
Should this happen, Australia’s tricky match in Kuwait won’t have as much riding on the line and Australia should be able to handle Indonesia at home in the final qualifying match.

David Wiseman is our Australia expert for this blog. He also is a Melbourne Cup expert.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.