For me Wood, Stamenic, Cacace all start for Australia easily.
Old, Paulsen, Garbett would be shouts to make the bench.
But we are well and truly behind them in terms of the football pyramid. Every time we play we lay down for them and it’s a easy victory when in fact it probably shouldn’t be.
The coaching mis match is obvious, but we are also in two different phases of our NT setups.
We have a young team full of promising players still trying to establish themselves around the world.
Whilst they’ve already got these 23-30 year olds very well established in high level leagues all around the world and much more experience.
I genuinely believe if the likes of Stamenic, Cacace, Garbett, Old and Paulsen can maximise their potentials, then we can be looking at players that can be regular top 5 league players players for the next 7-8 plus years.
We’ve already seen it with Stamenic in the UCL that he’s someone that’s rated really highly over in Europe at massive clubs.
Similar to the Aussie crop of Irankunda, Robertson, Circati and Bos.
Old, Paulsen, Garbett would be shouts to make the bench.
But we are well and truly behind them in terms of the football pyramid. Every time we play we lay down for them and it’s a easy victory when in fact it probably shouldn’t be.
The coaching mis match is obvious, but we are also in two different phases of our NT setups.
We have a young team full of promising players still trying to establish themselves around the world.
Whilst they’ve already got these 23-30 year olds very well established in high level leagues all around the world and much more experience.
I genuinely believe if the likes of Stamenic, Cacace, Garbett, Old and Paulsen can maximise their potentials, then we can be looking at players that can be regular top 5 league players players for the next 7-8 plus years.
We’ve already seen it with Stamenic in the UCL that he’s someone that’s rated really highly over in Europe at massive clubs.
Similar to the Aussie crop of Irankunda, Robertson, Circati and Bos.
Wood & Libby start for the Socceroos. Stamenic makes their squad, but I'd agrue Irvine, Metcalfe and Luongo are all starting ahead of him currently. Balard has claims.
Garbett ain't in a Socceroos squad. Not at the moment. Old, Bindon & Paulsen maybe, maybe not. Izzo perhaps stronger claims than Alex P to be the 3rd GK.
Their squad is older than the AWs, the core of their successful 2022 WC team is still there. Lots of grizzled tough guys in their late 20s and older. Helps make them hard to beat, if yes mostly already near 'their ceiling' career wise.
But they also have plenty of exciting younger players coming through with high upside. Alot of these guys would already be in regular AWs squads
GK - 18 yr old Anthony Pavlesic playing for Bayern's 2nd team, 19 yr old Steven Hall at Brighton. Gauci is still only 24 - young for a keeper
Defenders - 20 yr Giuseppe Bovalina in the MLS, 20 yr old Jake Girdwood-Reich in the MLS, 21 yr old Triantis at Sunderland/Hibs, 20 yr old Circati at Parma, 22 yr old Bos at Westerloo, 20 yr old Hayden Matthews at Sydney
Midfield - 22 yr old Cameron Peupion at Brighton, 20 yr old Segecic at Sydney/Dordrecht, 23 yr old Balard at Breda, 22 yr old Yazbek in the MLS, 25 yr old Denis Genreau at Toulouse, 21 yr old Alex Robertson at Cardiff City, 23 yr old Calem Nieuwenhof at Hearts
Forwards - 18 yr old Irankunda at Bayern, 20 yr old Garang Kuol at Newcastle United, 23 yr old Tilio at Melb City, 24 yr old Silvera at Middlesbrough/Pompey, 20 yr old Mohamed Toure at Randers, 21 yr old Raphael Borges Rodrigues at Coventry, 23 yr old Velupillay & 25 yr old Arzani
You also have 21 yr old midfielder Cristian Volpato who has played in Serie A with Sassuolo (now Serie B). Volpato was born in Sydney and debuted for Roma in 2021. He's in a tug of war between Italy and Australia over his international allegiance.
No doubt I've missed out a number of others.
Around 8.5 million Australians were born overseas (about 31%) a few million will have useful European passports. So plenty of highly talented young footballers like a Circati, Roberston etc with that handy little book will head off to Europe/USA very young not playing in the ALM, and so be completely unknown to Kiwi football fans. We have our Henry Grays, Tyler Bindons, but Australia will have dozens of young guys on youth deals up in Europe we have no idea about.
It's just purely a numbers game. They will always have a greater output of young players coming through, and so the Socceroos a much greater depth of talent to choose from.
Basically any Aussie starting regularly in the ALM would be in AWs contention, just as any Kiwi starting regularly for the Nix or Auckland is. Jamie Maclaren would be 2nd only to Wood in the AWs, and Jamie Mac's Socceroos days are well over.
But the emergence of Auckland FC (and then hopefully a 3rd ALM club), is going strongly increase the NZ football talent pool. Just as the Nix developing their Academy has. Watch out for Gillion, Randall, McKenlay, Toomey etc to push the AW incumbents. In the not too distant future if a guy like Eli Just drops to the Austrian 2nd tier, he likely loses his national team spot.