I will immediatley state that my opinions on the match are, I am afraid, formed only by watching various news 'highlight' packages, as despite my best intentions, I succumbed to Mr Sandman last night.
I have also had the benefit of listening to some media reports this morning.
1 Mark Schwarzer was in my opinion at fault for the third goal, and to a slightly lesser degree also at fault for the first goal. Normally we can expect him not be at fault, and there is an argument for saying that we lost two goals in this game, that normally we would not lose. However, lose them we did, and as one of the Turks said..football is about errors.:
At this level if one makes a mistake, whether it be as a goalie or otherwise, ie giving possession away, then it is very likely that you will be punished by a goal.
2 The penalty we got I never even knew we got a penalty this morning when I watched the highlights, and the very first thing I said when we got it, was "but he was miles out of the box!"
Clearly, a bit of lady luck shone on us there.
3 Media reports
I had the good fortune to watch Kyle Paterson being intervieweed on Fox this morning, and his view was that there was very little positive that could be taken from this game. He reckoned the other FF got the tactics completely wrong in the first half, and that the gulf in class between the two sides was as wide as the difference in the respective world rankings.
He advocated an "aussie" get up and at 'em approach in the second leg, stating that we don't yet know if the Turks can defend, as we hardly put them under any pressure.
He also made the point, and a rather telling one I thought, that our lone striker in the first half was apparently David Zrillic.
He said that while he intended no disrespect to David Zrillic, the fact that he was the 'lone' striker in the first half, given that he has just been released by a 'struggling Scottish outfit' was hardly likely to make the Turkish defence quake in their boots.
He said too, that Vieri mark 2 should be feeling 'sheepish' about having made his international debut, and that he was 'anonymous'
I make no comment on the above because as I say, I have not seen anything other than highlights, but i do remember a Max Vieri header that went just over the bar.
4 Gary Moretti interviewed on Sky
By all accounts Gary Morretti is a nice bloke, and good at his job, whatever that is (I am aware that Socoz duty statements tend to change unannounced in some instances).
However I would have thought that the effort could have been made to get either the other FF or Graham Arnold or a player to respond to Sky's phone call which was broadcast just after 9am this morning.
He was introduced as the "manager" (which he may well be) but when it came down to commenting on last night's proceedings, his opinon was really no more than that, as could have ben expressed by say Chris Dunkerley or Alan Clark, whose opionions, I should add, I value.
Surely someone could have, or should have, been provided who actually took part in last night's proceedings, be it coach, assistant coach or player.
I think we ned to get this right for next time.. surely we are not in a position where we do not need to 'court' the media?
This BTW should NOT in any way be interpreted as a criticism of Gary Moretti, who handled the interview and side stepped obvious questions about whether there will be team changes for the Melbourne game, with aplomb.
But if the other FF or Arnie had been there the sidestepping would not have been necessary.
5 There is no 5
6 The Crowd.
There will be ome, not many I grant you, but some nevertheless, who will be interested in my comments on the reported crowd, given that I have been an outspoken critic of the ticket pricing structure
I guess it would be easy for both sides of the argument to claim victory.
The great messiah out of whose erse shines eternal sunshine could point to the scoreboard and say..32,000...that's a 'healthy' crowd.
On the other side of the ledger, there are people like Kyle Paterson who this morning said he did NOT consider it a good crowd for a number of reasons.
One being that in in his estimate 15,000 of them were Turkish supporters.
Now what I did see, and was confirmed by Mrs Forza were lots and lots of turkish supporters.
I imagine that many of the turkish supporters bought tickets to the match mainly out of feelings of patriotism and a sense of duty, to support their homeland, as opposed necessarily becasue they are committed fitba followers...ie a chance to show their passion, patriotism and wave the flag...as we all tend to do
In much the same way that several of my fellow Jock mates in Melbourne are making plans to attend theh Australia v Scotland rugby match soon at Docklands (Telstra Dome) Stadium....them having no interst whatseover in rugby, but doing their patriotic duty (and it must be said providing an excuse to meet up and get ratarsed!)
Even Kyle, who tends to staunchly defend the new mob, suggested that the ticketing pricing was something that "John O'Neil has to go away and get right in future"
Take out the turks and it doesn't show a lot of fervour to support the Socceroos...at these prices.
My summary, from the limited time I have had to absorb everything..
Certainly not many positives all round to come out of this, and let's hope we can get through the next game without too much damage being done.
when the Oceania games come along, we'll get a bit more positive publicty (hopefully) because of a few wins.