I fully agree, it’s about giving 16-19 yo a go. But to do this various other decisions may need to be made or philosophies followed. Such as deciding not to sign as many visa players, being prepared to tolerate initial underperformance compared to a more experienced player, being prepared to...

Unless the socks are toe-socks this is just looking for trouble.

It has been going flat out apparently, and maybe some maintenance tasks have been delayed to cater for that. Delaying scheduled maintenance in an oil refinery would not be something that is decided upon lightly, but there is always a risk/reward trade-off for these type of things. Not saying...

Excellent analysis and a good read as well. While we all can debate the validity or otherwise of the points you raised (and on first read I think all or most are very valid), a detailed and brutally honest analysis of all points by each A League club (and many NPL clubs) about how those points...

Actually some of the SBS newsreaders these days are not that great with non-Anglo names. Not enough practice since the station doesn’t cover much football anymore!!!

I don’t know what the ref did disallow it for, but from this screenshot it looks like Sayer may have been offside from the initial pass.

It’s just AI crap, which has just re-selected the most recent squad and added Souttar. Not even worth debating.

Gauci is only on loan at Port Vale presumably until the end of the season, he is an Aston Villa player. By the same token he needs a move away from Villa also.

SBS News are a bit behind the times. On their news tonight in the sports section, they said for Socceroos fans to take note after reporting on and showing footage of Adrian Segacic taking a corner that resulted in a Portsmouth goal overnight :cool:

I didn't realise that living in Japan gave you eternal life.

Yep, Aussie games certainly were in the British Pools back then, even before the National League started. I recall seeing the first division games from NSW, Vic, Qld, SA and possibly WA on there. The pools were also available in Australia.

My opinion? Not an easy one, but based on the everything I know about him, on balance I consider him Croatian. Again, his opinion is the most important, and I don't know what he would say. I don't think there is a set formula (e.g., where born, parentage, time spent in Australia, where living...

Some similarities with Johnston, although I consider Vieri to be an Italian born in Italy to an Italian father, lived in Australia after his father relocated to Australia for football (work purposes) but returned to Italy to progress his football. A little bit different to Johnston who wasn't...

He was eligible to play for England in football, but that doesn't preclude him from being Australian in every other sense. I would be pretty certain that he still holds an Australian passport. Born to Australian parents (albeit in South Africa), lived in Australia from an early age and played...

Of course he is an Aussie. What nationality do you class him as?

Hrustic often does ok against the weaker teams, of which I would consider Curacao to be one. But he normally goes missing against the stronger teams.

At least one problem is that he was older than 20 when he played his last official game for Australia. Refer to clause (iii) in the FIFA document I posted.

According to Transfermarkt he has made 4 full appearances in official competition (in 2021 for WC2022 qualifiers) and 1 friendly appearance (Jordan 2022). He was born in 1993 so was over 21 at the time of his last official appearance. If this info is correct, he is not eligible to change...

To be fair, where do you think Arena will benefit most and where do you think he would prefer to be? In and around the Roma first team or playing in a mickey mouse under 17 competition?

Obviously???

I tend to agree on the point of finding players to fit his system rather than vice versa. The problem with this, when such an apparently very rigid system is adhered to as Popovic appears to do, is that it is highly likely that the best qualities of many players are not being utilised. The...

I’ve pretty much given up thinking about who Popovic will pick in the squad. He makes so many strange selections, both in the squads he picks and how he doesn’t even give some of those picks any game time, that I honestly have no inkling of what he will end up with. I mean, how he could decide...

I admire your confidence that Popovic won’t park the bus for all the games!

To be fair, Ryan Williams was available to play for Australia up until he recently changed to India (he did make one appearance in a friendly in 2019), but he is 32 and is/was never going go play for Australia again. So no one is going to moan about him changing international allegiance, and it...

The replays are available on Ten Play