A very interesting game. The conditions had weakened Australia before the ball was kicked off. Players and Pim suffered from 'Bali Belly'.
And Harry Kewell flew back to Sydney for assistance on his groin. Looks like Kewell's EPL career is over - he came into camp to save it but further injury in the match against Singapore has probably cost it. Hard to see where he goes now given his UK TV star wife and English family life. Can't see him wanting to get knocked about in the Championship league. Perhaps the A-League is an option? Newcastle have been courting him. In any case there will always be a Socceroos place for him. But clearly we need to find more talent.
The China game was held at high altitude and their super league had been delayed to allow extra localised training.
Then the ref was from UAE, not quite Kuwait, but not high quality. Far from picking up on the physical play, the ref appeared to encourage some Chinese outrages. In almost the first tackle of the game, Archie Thompson was taken out - literally - with a two footed challenge that would normally have received red. Given that it was the 2nd minute - probably deliberately timed by the Chinese defender given Archie wasn't on goal - the Ref only gave a yellow.
In about the 60th minute another off the ground studs up two footer was only penalised by a free kick to Australia. Pim was livid clearly it was an attempt to take out Wiltshire who again was not on-goal. These two miss-slips made the penalty against Megs look very suspicious.
Then Pim's attempt to kill the game with an extra time substitution was ignored by the 4th official. It will be interesting to see if the FFA makes any official moves to FIFA.
China will be very disappointed with their game. They had no advantage from either the altitude or the extra camp training.
Suddenly it looks like Australia may make the next round.
1 comment:
glad to hear the result. saw the highlights on youtube. i feel lucky china didn`t realise they had the chance to beat this aussie team.
i watched bits of the recent east asian tournament. in that little tourney, with the two koreas, china and japan, china were kicking anybody and everybody. china totally forgot about the ball and just kicked the japanese for 90 minutes. (or maybe its because nobody in asia likes the japanese).
whilst there were a couple of crazy tackles against us, it wasn`t as regular as in the east asian tournament.
the north koreans reminded me of the aussie team. fit, strong, hard running. they have a tank of a centre forward they don`t utilise enough.
its a pity to see djite miss his chance to play. is he too fragile to reach his potential? with no other large, back to goal strikers coming through, maybe australia will have to get used to small striker football.
clayton
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