There was certainly a lot of man love (probably illegal in Doha!) after the Roos sealed qualification.

Pim mightn’t have been jumping around like our old friend Hiddink, but he certainly earned effusive praise from Timmy Cahill.

 One thing’s for sure, there’s a long way to go before he convinces a lot of other punters.

Pim’s proven he’s a guru of the Asian confederation. A glance at our team sheets for each of the qualifiers shows the pragmatic Verbeek has gone for a ‘horses for courses’ mentality – pick the team to tackle all the variables, from the opposition, to the type of weather.

I’m not going to go over much traversed borrowed ground. The campaign hasn’t been entertaining.

Forget about Wednesday night’s match. No matter what anyone tries to convince themselves, it was a dead rubber against Bahrain, after a marathon flight, qualification in the bag, on a horrible evening in Sydney. The players went through the motions and threw any notion of shape out the window by the end of the match.

I’ve written it before; Verbeek’s challenge is to use the artillery at his disposal to create a team that can dominate and dictate the tempo of matches on their own terms.

He has 12 months to create a legendary team – and it won’t work having Scott McDonald huffing and puffing around all on his lonesome.

There’s a year to go. But I’m going to poke my head into the crystal ball and see who might be heading to South Africa, with an updated and new-look top 50 to boot. Rip in.

 

1. Schwarzer
2. Petkovic                
3. Federici               (gks)
4. Neil
5. Moore
6. Emerton
7. Wilkshere
8. Chipperfield 
9. Spiranovic            
10. Milligan   - a favourite son, who has got his act together. If Pim trusted Coyne, he wouldn’t have cajouled Moore back.                                
11. Grella 
12. Valeri                     
13. Culina
14. Jedinak                                    
15. Bresciano 
16. Cahill   
17. Kewell
18. Garcia                 
19. Holman    - I’d love to see Nick Carle, but I just can’t see it happening. If he couldn’t get half an hour last night, then will we he?            
20. Kennedy
21. McDonald
22. Rukyvytsya  - if he scores a few goals for FC Twente, he could be the joker in the pack. You read it here first.
23. Sterjovski 
    ————————————
24. Viduka ** gets in if available
25. Djite – a big season in Turkey gets him over the line too
26. Carney
27. Coyne
28. B Jones
29. Carle   
30. North
31. Holland – another smokey.
32. J Burns
33. Archie Thompson 
34. Beachamp      – had the spot, but bad luck and poor form has shot him down the pecking order.
35. R Williams
36. Galekovic
37. Vidosic
38. Troisi 
39. Steffanuto 
40. Madaschi
41. Coe 
42. Kisnorbo 
43. Vargas
44. Celeski  
45. N Burns 
46. Aloisi  
47. Porter
48. Theoklitos 
49. Milicevic
50. Vukovic