Why Australia & Pim Verbeek lost more than just the tactical battle vs Germany

Germany Coach Joachim Loew & Australia's Pim Verbeek

Loew & his team were accused of arrogance by the English speaking media! As it turned out they were doing their homework on the Socceroos!

The media in Australia did not waste a second after the Socceroos emphatic defeat by Germany! The knives were & are still out! Depending on the media outlet everyone & everything under the sun from Pim Verbeek to the players to the actual sport itself were attacked for the so called embarrassing defeat!

Channel Ten went as far as claiming today that 3 senior players had officially complained to the FFA about Pim Verbeek.

Ben Buckley & the FFA officially denied the rumours this afternoon. Of course we all know what it means when the officials resort to denial in any situation! It means that not all is well in the camp & the much envied team spirit & mateship that Australian teams in most sports are renouned for is lacking. Those of us who are dedicated World Cup followers can count dozens of teams, most notoriously several of the talented Holland teams, which performed poorly at World Cups as a direct result of disharmony in their camps.

But here's the point:

At the end of the day Pim Verbeek is the coach. Whilst he should allow players to have an input after the disaster against Germany, his position must be respected & all rebellion must be quashed at once.

True!, Pim Verbeek's tactical appraoch went horribly wrong & was very poor at best & very naive at worst. We were exposed throughout the match & our shortcomings were embarrassingly on display. He abandoned the much unloved & criticised, yet disciplined & successful system that had taken his team all the way to the World Cup, and we all paid for it! The players, the fans, the coach himself, the FFA, the (yet again) disenchanted casual non football fans & potentially our 2022 bid. But a coach's position is a revered one & must be respected until the end of the tournament.

The job at hand now is to unify & motivate the players & prepare them mentally, physically & tactically for the next two matches in order to redeem our national reputation, & indeed that of the players & the coach, and with them the midterm viability & popularity of football in Australia.

Having said all of that, I am absolutely amazed at the seemingly poor study & appreciation of the German footballing mentality prior to the game. Germans & the Dutch are bitter sporting & historical rivals. Pim, a Dutchman, has no excuse in underestimating the Germans so badly. Anyone who has followed German football over the years could have warned the team about some typical characteristics of the German national team, some of which I eluded to in my pre match blog last week. The Socceroos did not seem to go to the match with any of the following facts in their plans:

• When the former German great Paul Breitner was interviewed prior to the match, he admitted he as a commentator & most probably most of the German players knew little about Australia & its players, but he stated the staff in the team whose job was to get to know Australia were surely doing that!

• Germany have always worked on both mental as well as physical state of their players. Their successful track record in the World Cup owes as much to their physical & mental strength as it does to to their tactical prowess.

• All the English speaking media hype in Australia & UK pointed to arrogant & dismissive approach of Germany to Socceroos & lack of world class talent in the German squad.. What happened on the day was the exact opposite!

Australia , the second oldest team in the torrnament went to the match against the Youngest German side since 1954 expecting a rugby style physical game void of tactical matery! The Germans on the other hand fielded 5 tactically gifted players all younger than 22 & with a handful of caps between them in their starting line up & supplemented them with world class & tactically gifted stars such as Klose, Podolski, Lahm & Schweinsteiger!

The problem here lies with the English speaking media, and that includes all forms of media that is involved with the English Premier League & Enfglish football in general.

All we hear on TV shows & read in various English soccer magazines (& I have been doing both for more than 30 years) is how few tactically gifted footballers Germany has produced since they won the World Cup in 1990! Whilst this is correct to a certain extent, it is only relative to exceptional stars from a handful of countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Holland & Spain, and much less accurate in comparison with players in e.g. Italy & England & the likes!

It seems Pim Verbeek lost his Dutch instinct & started to believe in English speaking tabloid sport reporting expecting a German side void of talent or tactics! The likes of Ozil, Muller, Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Kedira, Klose & Podolski are all as tactically & technically as gifted as any of the top EPL players & many other players across Europe! & that showed on the night! Australia expected a physical opponent & got little masters of the ball instead!

• Germany always conduct their final preparations prior to the World Cup by playing a so called minnow such as Luxembourg or Lichtenstein in order to allow their players to practise tactical formations & sharpen their minds by scoring lots of goals. This year they played a local side in Italy for a 25-0 win before flying to South Africa. By the time they start the tournament they are hungry for goals & their first opponent would be wise to employ tried & tested & well disciplined tactics against them. Pim abandoned his tried 7 tested & well disciplined tactics of the past two years.
• As Craig Foster states, the modus operandi of the group stage, Germany are masters of the World Cup "modus operandi", i.e. win the first match & win by as big a margin as you can! This not only takes the pressure off, it also gives (in this case) strikers such as Podolski & Klose well needed confidence for the rest of the tournament (both had poor seasons & both scored against Australia). For e.g. in 2006 Germany won their opening match 4-2 (scored 4) & in 2002 8-0 & even a 2-0 in 1998!

The point I am trying to make from the above is that a good team performance & a respectable scoreline would have easily made up for defeat in the match against Germany. It was the poor performance that was so sadly missing that hurt the most. Amateurish tactics & inferior physical conditioning showed throughout the match!

But all is not lost! as long as our leaders can unify & re motivate the team, review the tactical approach & bring back the die hard Aussie spirit, we can still make it to the second round. neither Ghana nor Serbia impressed much in their first game & the Socceroos at their most disciplined are more than capable of grinding the right results out of the next two matches & redeem themselves & their coach!