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Interview with Les Scheinflug

A video interviewing Les Schienflug, Jess Vanstrattan, Mark Byrnes and Scott McDonald about the final. It was a good watch.

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The story of Australia’s only FIFA World Cup final appearance | 1999 Joeys | The story of Australia’s only FIFA World Cup final appearance. 💚💛 Ahead of today’s anniversary of the 1999 FIFA U-17 World Cup final, we spoke to former... | By Football Au

The story of Australia’s only FIFA World Cup final appearance. 💚💛 Ahead of today’s anniversary of the 1999 FIFA U-17 World Cup final, we spoke to former...
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gee there must have been a buzz around australian football back then

Australia starting to produce stars in europe and constantly getting out of group stages in youth tournaments

if you look at the squad for the 1999 u17 world cup, it was actually one of our weakest in terms of how they went on with their careers. It seems that the FA learnt the lesson that youth tournaments don't matter. However, this was too unnuanced. Having a coach like Sheinflug who has had club success isn't a panacea for youth development, but it does make enough of a difference to be worth doing


The other thing is, if you make a deep run in these tournaments you make the much coveted back pages of australian newspapers. The apl would kill for that. And unlike the socceroos, these players would mostly play in the a league so would be a great marketing tool. We need to stop giving trainee coaches these underage teams and pick someone decent
 
grazorblade said:
gee there must have been a buzz around australian football back then

Australia starting to produce stars in europe and constantly getting out of group stages in youth tournaments

if you look at the squad for the 1999 u17 world cup, it was actually one of our weakest in terms of how they went on with their careers. It seems that the FA learnt the lesson that youth tournaments don't matter. However, this was too unnuanced. Having a coach like Sheinflug who has had club success isn't a panacea for youth development, but it does make enough of a difference to be worth doing


The other thing is, if you make a deep run in these tournaments you make the much coveted back pages of australian newspapers. The apl would kill for that. And unlike the socceroos, these players would mostly play in the a league so would be a great marketing tool. We need to stop giving trainee coaches these underage teams and pick someone decent
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People talk about golden generation... it wasn't so much. There was a steady improvement and evolution of the game here from the late 80's onward until the early 2000's. Then it just ended and the FFA revolution made all kinds of changes to the detriment of the sport which we are still experiencing the fallout from today.

Short term greed that looked to exploit where the sport had gotten to took a front seat.
 
Lupi said:
People talk about golden generation... it wasn't so much. There was a steady improvement and evolution of the game here from the late 80's onward until the early 2000's. Then it just ended and the FFA revolution made all kinds of changes to the detriment of the sport which we are still experiencing the fallout from today.

Short term greed that looked to exploit where the sport had gotten to took a front seat.
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It's true there was steady improvement from the start of the nsl until we hit birth years 78-80. Those born 81-84 went through the nsl system and made up the missing generation and were a sharp decline on what came before.

It's possible this is a delayed effect of removing p&r, or the gg were a bit of an outlier. In any case, removing the ais, a h&a nyl and reducing the player pathways probably hurt
 
mate there is no doubt it hurt, look at us.
We are a sporting nation and punched above our weight in many codes/disciplines but at least we had a great core and players kept coming through at football.
Some will say oh it got more competitive in EU due to africans etc BUT what IF we retained the AIS, had Clubs synced as we moved on through the years, improved TD's as you'd expect happen.
Stronger leagues, kids having more opportunities surely we would have developed a few more EPL regular players surely And a stronger Roo outlook than where we are now and last number of years.

Anyway, Rasic/Les/Arok etc and the likes knew and saw what could happen here and where from ? mostly ethnic roots followed by aussie born ones.
That got killed !
 
LFC said:
mate there is no doubt it hurt, look at us.
We are a sporting nation and punched above our weight in many codes/disciplines but at least we had a great core and players kept coming through at football.
Some will say oh it got more competitive in EU due to africans etc BUT what IF we retained the AIS, had Clubs synced as we moved on through the years, improved TD's as you'd expect happen.
Stronger leagues, kids having more opportunities surely we would have developed a few more EPL regular players surely And a stronger Roo outlook than where we are now and last number of years.

Anyway, Rasic/Les/Arok etc and the likes knew and saw what could happen here and where from ? mostly ethnic roots followed by aussie born ones.
That got killed !
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not having underage players and a h&a nyl from the first year of the a league sealed our fate. It made it impossible to keep up the standards
 
grazorblade said:
not having underage players and a h&a nyl from the first year of the a league sealed our fate. It made it impossible to keep up the standards
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also that many AL Clubs didn't have Y players for ages as well from memory, not just 1 season was for many.
The whole Jnr/YL sector was in limbo.
 
LFC said:
also that many AL Clubs didn't have Y players for ages as well from memory, not just 1 season was for many.
The whole Jnr/YL sector was in limbo.
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Apparently we were one of the oldest leagues in the world when we started. An aging league, with 42 starting spots for local players, shortened youth league without underage players and a league that started as slightly weaket than league 2....its no wonder we struggled to produce players
 
grazorblade said:
It's true there was steady improvement from the start of the nsl until we hit birth years 78-80. Those born 81-84 went through the nsl system and made up the missing generation and were a sharp decline on what came before.

It's possible this is a delayed effect of removing p&r, or the gg were a bit of an outlier. In any case, removing the ais, a h&a nyl and reducing the player pathways probably hurt
Click to expand...

Do we know what the correlation is between heading to Europe early and success? I kinda thought most of the GG went overseas early, not many after 21 years old.

Would our academies have helped the young GG as much as going to Europe would have? I know a few if them raved about the AIS. Not sure what my point is haha... maybe, are our "elite pathways" as good as Europe's? Does Aussie "elite" mean the same as global elite?
 
HappyGuus said:
Do we know what the correlation is between heading to Europe early and success? I kinda thought most of the GG went overseas early, not many after 21 years old.

Would our academies have helped the young GG as much as going to Europe would have? I know a few if them raved about the AIS. Not sure what my point is haha... maybe, are our "elite pathways" as good as Europe's? Does Aussie "elite" mean the same as global elite?
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One thing that surprised me is it doesnt matter much if you break through in europes 2nd tier by the age of 18 or 23, your odds of stepping up is roughly the same, but there seems to be a cutoff at u24 where even good players can only jump a level if they get promoted or absolutely dominate their league. Some like lucas neill jump from the third tier to the top and some like harry kewell break straight into the first tier, but that is super rare for us.

If you need to break into europe by u24, you need to be in the best quarter of a league players by u23.

These days the a league is pretty decent preparation for international football - we saw goodwin be a standout at the world cup and milligan has done well before him

The top quarter of players in a league are good enough for the league above them, so when you get the top 1/16th of a league players can do well at international football.

Having said that, your weaknesses dont get exposed as much in the a league.

Taggart and maclaren struggle to lose a tight marker who is quick over the first 5 meters
Geria has a poor passing range, so unless paired with technical players can be trapped in buildup
Matthews is poor in the air
 
The very fact that Frank Farina apparently never considered fast-tracking at least a couple of those guys into the Socceroos set-up of the time pretty much gives away what a d0uch3-canoe joke of a coach he was/is; FFS we were still in Oceania, it wouldn’t have cost anything to cap them against 🇦🇸 instead of fielding the senior guys that he did🙃

As it turned out only Scott McDonald, Josh Kennedy, Jade North and Adrian Madaschi actually went on to represent Australia at senior level.
 
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I'm probably too late to respond to this as I've only read the story now but if we have to remember that era the structures were different back then where every team had academies, state programs in every state as well as the AIS which meant plenty of pathways for young talent to be identified and developed.

Thrown in the year round calendar where kids would play state league in the winter and the national youth league in the summer and players would get 40 plus games a year which helped them prepare for the NSL at a younger age so they would go into it as more battle harden players.

Thrown the timing of success at youth World Cup level and doing well at the olympics and this formed the environment of the GG era to happen.

In a way i'm not surprised the FA want to bring the FA Academies in as this similar structure worked back then, would they bring back the AIS I guess we will find out if the govt. is willing to fund it in some capacity.

Right now where we only have the a-league academies and not every team has one as well, also even if the players play against men in the senior NPL there is merit to bring back a proper home and away NYL as well so players can play year round if they can't play a-league football, basically the players here don't play enough in this country and this has been a problem since the a-league era started and hasn't been addressed well.

I also have concerns some teams are playing young players for the sake of it which is why they going into the development route as the clubs are trying to run a tight ship especially now, the thing is young players need good mentors and good players around them to develop playing them for the sake of it wont develop properly for challenges of overseas football.

Thrown in our inability to qualify via the tricky route of the AFC which has meant less youth World Cup appearances and olympics which have dried up and overall less international exposure and larger eyes of scouts which the GG had to get overseas moves.

Get back to similar structures this time around with the emerging NSD and it would help also if every a-league had academy teams as well I don't know why some have removed their youth teams in favour of letting the NPL teams develop the talent only to take them when they are ready I feel the NPL clubs should be financially rewarded for it if this structure is in place, thrown in the FA Academies and maybe the AIS and then maybe we can get another GG in the future?

Who knows but the powers at be need to try and not cut corners when it comes to developing talent.

Sorry for the long answer :)
 
Barca4life said:
I'm probably too late to respond to this as I've only read the story now but if we have to remember that era the structures were different back then where every team had academies, state programs in every state as well as the AIS which meant plenty of pathways for young talent to be identified and developed.

Thrown in the year round calendar where kids would play state league in the winter and the national youth league in the summer and players would get 40 plus games a year which helped them prepare for the NSL at a younger age so they would go into it as more battle harden players.

Thrown the timing of success at youth World Cup level and doing well at the olympics and this formed the environment of the GG era to happen.

In a way i'm not surprised the FA want to bring the FA Academies in as this similar structure worked back then, would they bring back the AIS I guess we will find out if the govt. is willing to fund it in some capacity.

Right now where we only have the a-league academies and not every team has one as well, also even if the players play against men in the senior NPL there is merit to bring back a proper home and away NYL as well so players can play year round if they can't play a-league football, basically the players here don't play enough in this country and this has been a problem since the a-league era started and hasn't been addressed well.

I also have concerns some teams are playing young players for the sake of it which is why they going into the development route as the clubs are trying to run a tight ship especially now, the thing is young players need good mentors and good players around them to develop playing them for the sake of it wont develop properly for challenges of overseas football.

Thrown in our inability to qualify via the tricky route of the AFC which has meant less youth World Cup appearances and olympics which have dried up and overall less international exposure and larger eyes of scouts which the GG had to get overseas moves.

Get back to similar structures this time around with the emerging NSD and it would help also if every a-league had academy teams as well I don't know why some have removed their youth teams in favour of letting the NPL teams develop the talent only to take them when they are ready I feel the NPL clubs should be financially rewarded for it if this structure is in place, thrown in the FA Academies and maybe the AIS and then maybe we can get another GG in the future?

Who knows but the powers at be need to try and not cut corners when it comes to developing talent.

Sorry for the long answer :)
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Key sentence in your response is:

"Who knows but the powers at be need to try and not cut corners when it comes to developing talent."

Despite the "evils" of the NSL and before none of the clubs were forced to have youth setups as part of their licensing agreements, they ALL did because they were, first and foremost, football clubs......
 
Monoethnic Social Club said:
Key sentence in your response is:

"Who knows but the powers at be need to try and not cut corners when it comes to developing talent."

Despite the "evils" of the NSL and before none of the clubs were forced to have youth setups as part of their licensing agreements, they ALL did because they were, first and foremost, football clubs......
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I know it's hard to go back in time but what world if they kept the same structures in place instead of starting again with the old soccer/new football tag?

I feel the Crawford report as much was needed it the interpretation was probably wrong that we need new clubs to replace them when actually we need the foundation to evolve allowing the best of both worlds to happen without scarifying the youth development structures which underpin the national league and national teams? It was kind of crazy that it took 10 years for a-league teams to start having academy sides when they should have had it as part of entering into the a-league era after all that's how football leagues operate.
 
Barca4life said:
I know it's hard to go back in time but what world if they kept the same structures in place instead of starting again with the old soccer/new football tag?

I feel the Crawford report as much was needed it the interpretation was probably wrong that we need new clubs to replace them when actually we need the foundation to evolve allowing the best of both worlds to happen without scarifying the youth development structures which underpin the national league and national teams? It was kind of crazy that it took 10 years for a-league teams to start having academy sides when they should have had it as part of entering into the a-league era after all that's how football leagues operate.
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"Interpreting" the Crawford report has become the new dawn equivalent of the 40 thousand evangelical branches in the US "interpreting" the bible... everyone reads into it what agenda they want to push....
 
Better late than never Barca well brought up…..
It staggers me how they threw everything away for the AL.
Just as any business take over there is good and bad - positives negatives but the astute buyer would look at the good that helps you business model grow.
No not to Frank, surprisingly a successful businessman but htf did he fuck up our game a game he actually lived for his Hakoah fellow devotee’s let alone the Crawford Report being like it the friggin bible !
Look at us 20yrs down the path.
They say NSL was joke well with all the intel post AL start, report this report that look where we are !
The new dawners are ignoramaces’s.
I watch read their hope of this player that player and the next coming ?!
Yer like good luck - I see no core I see no players hitting heights, Irakunda, how before him is the next best thing.
Trouble is we need a dozen next best things of varied varieties.
Crawford saw something - fucked if I know.
 
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