Socceroos Farewell – Don’t Impress

May 25, 2010

Australia played New Zealand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in a game that was a farewell to both sides. After going behind to an early Chris Killen goal, the Socceroos equalized via Dario Vidosic. Then Brett Holman scored the winner with the last kick of the game. Most live bets were on an Australian win and they would have been relieved in the end.

It wasn’t an exciting free-flowing game but that may have been due to both sides not wanting to go full in. No one wants to get an injury this close to the World Cup especially in a game which is just a friendly. Thus this may have held the game back as a spectacle.
Although having said that, there were a few crude challenges by the Australian players; most notably by Vince Grella and Tim Cahill and both of those players were luck to stay on the field and not receive a direct red card. Maybe if it was a competitive match the referee would have been sterner but in this environment he decided to let it go.

Following the match, Pim Verbeek cut three players from his squad – Scott McDonald, Nick Carle and Jade North. McDonald is a fantastic player but he has had trouble fitting into the system that Verbeek has set up for the team. He is the second striker and when Verbeek only uses one, it means it is hard for McDonald to function efficiently. Even though he has been a proven goal scorer at club level, he hasn’t yet scored a goal for Australia and that would be very frustrating for him, especially at his age. This would have been the perfect World Cup to make a name for himself and take his game to the next level.

28 players will now go to the training camp in South Africa and will be cut to 23 on the June 1 deadline.

Australia now has warm-up games against Denmark and the USA. Both sides are a significantly step ahead of New Zealand and the games should be more competitive. Additionally Australia will be boosted by the return of players such as Harry Kewell, Mark Schwarzer, Rhys Williams and Richard Garcia who all sat out the game against New Zealand.

With just over two weeks to go until the World Cup, everyone is getting excited. Hopefully for the Socceroos they will deliver on these expecatations.

Darren Albert writes for this blog. He also writes about betting sites.

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