World Cup 2018 FIFA World Cup-Group C Thread (Australia, France, Peru, Denmark)

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juss

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Kewell was better as a Socceroo, just not as often as his body wouldn't allow it.
Disagree, not even accounting for injury, but Cahill consistently stepped up on the biggest stages, qualifiers and obviously the world cup. He saved and won countless matches for us. Kewell didnt anywhere nearly as often, and injuries probably a major factor, but that marks him down. Cant rate him on what he might have done when another bloke did it for over a decade.
 

hey shorty

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Disagree, not even accounting for injury, but Cahill consistently stepped up on the biggest stages, qualifiers and obviously the world cup. He saved and won countless matches for us. Kewell didnt anywhere nearly as often, and injuries probably a major factor, but that marks him down. Cant rate him on what he might have done when another bloke did it for over a decade.
Kewell nearly carried us into 1998 as an 18yo, ripped England to pieces in 2003. He was also BOG in 2 of our 4 2006 Cup games, and was our best in the ill-fated 07 Asian Cup.

Cahill has longevity on his side, but underrate Kewells international performances and you do so with ignorance.

It's irrelevant to the argument here though, as Tim would have had no bearing on the result if he did play. Maclaren on the other hand......
 

Axl the great

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I understand what Ange was doing, and with a better squad we wouldn't even be having this question and he'd probably be PM by now, but I do think we were on a road to ruin at the current trajectory

What Bertie the Beetle has done with our backline is great. He's turned Sainsbury - who I thought was an out-and-out peanut not even a year ago, into a solid defender

Jeez we were stiff last night. Once we got the goal Denmark seemed to panic, before that I thought they were composed and basically read us like a children's picture book

Noticed a few across BigFooty have been wondering why Cahill wasn't on for the magical headed goal in the last minute. I don't think he can see out 5 minutes of a match, let alone a decent chunk of it. If Millwall wasn't particularly eager to give him an extended run then I doubt we would be

Makes you wonder if he's in the team on merit or to have one last shot in the last group game at chasing membership of the famous I-scored-in-four-World-Cups club.
There were that many balls fizzing through the box Cahill had to come on.
We have nobody with his timing and nous to get on the end of crosses. Worse still their keep was off his line and caught out in a few of those crosses and again, nobody there.
Cahill had to come on purely because he is the best option for the way we were attacking, had we played through the centre with ground balls then I'd say no but there was definitely an opportunity to win and I'm of the opinion we didn't do everything we could have.
 
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What playing philosophy is that?

Conceding goals against the worst attacks in the world?

Are you talking about a possession based tactic? BVM employs a possession based tactic, we won the possession against Denmark and lost the possession 45/55 to France, not exactly a 70/30 counter attack style shift.

I don't know about you, but the qualifying series just gone is just about the worst I've seen the national side play since the late 80's.

In 2014 possession was 50%/50% vs Netherlands, 42%/58% against vs Spain, 35%/65% vs Chile.
You don’t like Ange or his playing style. My argument is that if we are appointing Bert for a short term tenure he needs to achieve short term results. It’s irrelevant if Ange failed at qualifying (which he didn’t since we did qualify).

So is possession a good thing or bad thing with you?

Do you have the possession stats for all those games in the qualifying where we dominated and failed to score?

Once again, it is not equivalent to compare Denmark to Spain, Chile and Netherlands.

I don’t believe you could think that France Peru and Denmark is a tougher group than Spain Chile Netherlands.


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Pykie

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You don’t like Ange or his playing style. My argument is that if we are appointing Bert for a short term tenure he needs to achieve short term results. It’s irrelevant if Ange failed at qualifying (which he didn’t since we did qualify).

So is possession a good thing or bad thing with you?

Do you have the possession stats for all those games in the qualifying where we dominated and failed to score?

Once again, it is not equivalent to compare Denmark to Spain, Chile and Netherlands.

I don’t believe you could think that France Peru and Denmark is a tougher group than Spain Chile Netherlands.


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2014 rankings: 1,14,15.

vs

2018 rankings: 7,11,12.


Much of a muchness.
 
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Is this the playing philosophy that left us with only 15 clean sheets from 50 starts against mostly Asian opposition?

Is the philosophy to be complete sieves at the back?
Hmm. I think you think it’s easy to keep a clean sheet. It is if you play a counter attacking style. But we did not.

We scored the most goals out of all Asian sides in the qualifying but when things tightened up we got unlucky results because our strikers fluffed chances.


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2014 rankings: 1,14,15.

vs

2018 rankings: 7,11,12.


Much of a muchness.
FIFA rankings are not reliable. In fact they are a joke.

Chile were champions of South America in 6 months and Spain were reigning word champions. Netherlands went on the finish 3rd.

Peru and Denmark aren’t near any of those three sides.


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lewdogs

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Well win or draw for them means 1st place. Risky not going for win though as they could lose then and finish 2nd
They haven't been that impressive yet though (aside from a small period of the Peru game) so I think they'll want a good performance.
 

Cruyff14

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Are you talking about their performances for Australia, or in general?


Because Viduka and Kewell were a few levels above Cahill at club level.

Viduka finished 3rd,3rd,4th,4th in the EPL season goal scorers during his career.

He also won Scottish player of the year after a 27 goal season for Celtic.


Remember Kewell absolutely peaked during an era where playing for Australia by European based players was regularly overlooked because of travel and Australia being in Oceania with most games against the likes of Fiji, Cook Islands, Vanuatu etc


If Kewell came through now, he'd be far and away our best player ever in G&G, the bloke was an absolute wizard in his early 20's, he was genuinely one of the best wingers in the world at Leeds. I can't explain to the younger generation who missed him, but it'd be like having someone like Mahrez or Sadio Mane play for the side now. Id argue he was better than someone like Mane though when he was peak Leeds.

Being that few years older than Cahill, his world cup appearances were also limited because of having to qualify against Iran (he couldn't of done much more than he did) and Uruguay version 1.


It's a travesty that group of players never got the current regular competition we get by being in Asia (it has it's critics, but the Asian Cup and it's qualifying process and the qualifying process for the WC against top sides, like Iran, Japan, S.Korea etc are a major step up from Oceania and the travel is usually much easier from Europe for away legs).


I'll just leave this here:

Kewell is our most talented player based on ability that we've ever had. He was brilliant but it is unfortunate that his career was ruined by injury. He would have received better recognition had he not been so injury prone.

I think Cahill has been our best performer at a national level, but in terms of natural ability, he's nowhere near Kewell.

And I remember that goal, it cost us the league :(

It's because most of those people would've mostly seen the three of them play for the International team, rather than club level.

Hard to argue that Viduka/Kewell outperformed Cahill for Australia, but they're comfortably ahead for both club and ability
Yep, agree. Can't argue that IMO.
 

Hamingja

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It was a fine performance last night but it feels like ever since Adam was a boy we have had good keepers, CB's and DMs - a couple of speedy wing backs but generally have dogshit strikers and attacking midfielders. Cahill appears to have been a once a century poacher for us and he is basically a walking corpse these days.
A few players have come through with technical ability in Mooy, Rogic & Arzani compared to your Grella's and Jedinak's who are your classic Aussie style players.

Strikers though has been a complete wasteland. You can't expect to produce Messi's or Ronaldo's but you'd at least think we could develop Jesus Kennedy level strikers regularly and we can't even do that.
 

Total_Juddshanks

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There were that many balls fizzing through the box Cahill had to come on.
We have nobody with his timing and nous to get on the end of crosses. Worse still their keep was off his line and caught out in a few of those crosses and again, nobody there.
Cahill had to come on purely because he is the best option for the way we were attacking, had we played through the centre with ground balls then I'd say no but there was definitely an opportunity to win and I'm of the opinion we didn't do everything we could have.
It's just impossible to know because no one really knows just how cooked Timmy actually is.

But there were two crosses in particular though, the header which Leckie fluffed, and the Arzani sizzler which no less than two Australian player tripped over, which I think Cahill would have slotted even if he was in an ongoing vegetative state.
 
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