Socceroos Attention Turns to Asia

December 24, 2009

The World Cup draw has been done and the excitement and buzz that that generated has died down. Now focus moves to other things namely Asian Cup qualification.

After two games, Australia had one point and the thought of missing out on qualifying for the tournament was a possibility. If this would have been the case, it would be a massive embarrassment. After using A-League players for the first two matches, Pim Verbeek went for the stars and this paid off with two wins against Oman in successive matches.

This puts Australia in a much better situation. They still aren’t out of the woods but at least they control their own destiny. Currently they are level on seven points with Kuwait with Oman on four points and Indonesia on three. As long as Australia don’t lose against Kuwait they should be ok. Soccer betting believes their qualification to be a done deal.

If Indonesia and Oman draw in the other match, they will effectively deny each other the chance to qualify.

The only problem for Verbeek is that he won’t be able to field any of the players who play in the Premier League as it is the busiest time of the year for the English clubs. The final match which is at home to Indonesia is also on a non-FIFA date.

Still Australia should qualify from this point and if they don’t, it’s their own fault. Effectively not to qualify they will need to lose both of their remaining matches.

Following this, they only other game they have scheduled before the World Cup is a farewell friendly at the MCG in May. There will also be some warm-up games in South Africa.

All in all, it was a pretty good year for the Socceroos. They went to Yokohama and had a good 0-0 draw and defeated them 2-1 in the return leg. There were losses; to Kuwait and to South Korea.

But there were also some good wins most notable a 3-0 away win to Ireland. They hosted the Dutch in a dour 0-0 draw which was eminently forgettable. At the end of the day, the most important task of the Socceroos was to qualify for the World Cup and they did that.

2010 will obviously have different objectives most of which will be focused on South Africa. They will be looking to at the very least make the knockout stage of the tournament and to do that they will need to play very very well.

David Wiseman writes for this blog. He also writes about the Australian Open.

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