Plenty of debate on SEN this morning on how and what the Socceroos achieved at WC2014. Callers gave their reasons and were then asked for a rating out of 10, so thought it might be interesting to see how this Forum saw it.
For mine:
Positive
I was expecting us to score either 0 or 1, and thought we'd concede 10-15, so at worst it could have been 0-15 and best case 1-10. We finished 3-9 which is well ahead. We put mileage into players we'd hope to be better for the experience in future international games. We played some very good patches of football. Our cattle's combined professional salary probably equals (or close to) the amount of 1 player in each of our group opponents to highlight the gulf in individual quality.
Unknown
Selection - Plenty of plusses, bit we'll never know what differences Wiltshere, Kennedy, Neil, Schwarzer etc might have made, particularly the latter when our keeper unfortunately had a well below par tournament.
Negative
We failed to collect a single point, despite having more than reasonable chance in both of the first two games to do so. Thus from a results perspective, comparing against both previous campaigns and other nations, it's poor.
I guess to some extent we wont know the success of selection strategy until the Asian Cup is over, or possibly even WC2018. But for mine, at this stage, I'd rate the overall package of WC2014 for the Aussies at - 6/10
Score = 6/10