Olyroos vs DPR Korea

Throughout the A-League community I hear a lot of anti Olympics sentiment directed towards the Olyroos in regards to their clubs players being taken for so called 'meaningless' matches. I just can't believe this attitude and love having these matches whether it disadvantages my club or not. Even that is debateable. Watching the way that the Olyroos knock the ball around and are being taught to play under Baan (Now Arnold) is doing wonders for the players development. An example of two players I have really noticed develop since joining the Olyroos are Zadkovich and Topor-Stanley. Both have improved their composure on the ball and distribution out of sight over the last 12 months and the junior national teams they have been involved with should surely get some of the credit for this improvement.

Well, onto the match. "Other commitments" meant that I couldn't get to the match up in Newcastle so I watched at home on an internet stream again. Dodgy Futbol24 livescore website lied to me, saying that the game kicked off at 8pm when it was really starting at 7, so I missed the first half! I suppose I am the stupid one because in my last post regarding the Olyroos I even said the kick off time was 7 myself....

Lack of coverage from anywhere other than livescore websites really pisses me off. These matches are to get our young guys to the Olympics for gods sake. Surely with marketing taken in the right direction these games could be just as popular as the Socceroos matches? Tony at The Round Ball Analyst covered the match minute by minute and his updates, especially reading about the first half, are definitely appreciated.

From the second half it looked like we came out something resembling a 4-3-3 or 4-5-1 as follows:

----------Vukovic
Zad-Milligan-Leijer-Hyphen
----------Musialik
-------Celeski-Ward
Williams-------------Sarkies
------------Bridge

A 4-5-1 formation at home against an obviously inferior opposition?.... "Hmm Arnold" is all I'm going to say about that one.

Australia came out after the break all guns blazing and the immediate pressure saw us go 1-0 up in the 50th minute through a Milligan header from an excellent corner to the far post from Sarkies. Milligan just steamed through unmarked out of nowhere and met the ball with a hard header.

Everytime I have watched them, I have been impressed with the way the Olyroos have the desire to keep the ball and play possession based football. Australia again showed their want to play this type of game and executed it quite well. North Korea were playing an obvious counter attack game, not really pressureing the ball, although as the game went on were forced to play a lot further up the pitch and started to take the game to the Aussies, coming as close as hitting the bar on one occasion.

Zadkovich was noticeable getting forward from the back but the pacey North Korean winger (who I naively have absolutely no idea of his name) definitely kept Hyphen a lot quieter than in previous Olyroos games that I have watched. Inside these two, Leijer was quite solid and organised as usual and Milligan showed his composure and distribution skills time and time again. This guy just has to be in the senior side more often!

I didn't think that the midfield was as dominant as it could have been and when Arnold starting making substitutions around the 70 minute mark everything seemed to chop and change and just seemed a lot more disorganised. It also dissapointingly saw us stick with a seemingly even more defensive 4-5-1 than before:

----------Vukovic
Zad-Milligan-Leijer-Hyphen
-----Musialik-Broxham
Micevski--Bridge--Sarkies
------------Djite

Bridge and then Djite when he came on were just playing to hold up the ball for the midfield. I didn't see a lot of Bridge's work due to missing the first half but I really rated Djite's cameo off the bench during the last 10 mins and thought he did well in the role obviously assigned to him. Can't see him being left on the bench next match to be honest.

Speaking of attack, I found Arnold's comments to the press after the game quite frustrating:

"That's why I got angry at the end because that could've been a one-all draw when we should've been much more clinical with our opportunities."

I just didn't think Arnold used the right tactics to be whinging about the 'finishing' and think that it is very harsh on the players. Why are these extremely promising kids being put through Arnold who has been shown to be rubbish time and time again with every single team that he gets his hands on?!

Although Milligan got the official man of the match for his goal, I didnt think there were any great stand outs or great dissapointments either. A good solid team performance was required and was delivered by the lads tonight. The importance of taking maximum points in these home games cannot be stressed enough. The prospect of travelling to Pyongyang in the final round needing to take points really scares me and tonights result goes a long way in pushing us towards qualification. Hooray!

DANE