Here is the initial 50-man squad chosen by Socceroos coach Holger Osieck for next month’s Asian Cup tournament in Qatar.
Preliminary Socceroos squad: Adam Federici, Bradley Jones, Eugene Galekovic, Mark Schwarzer, Mitchell Langerak, Nathan Coe, Michael Theoklitos, Adrian Madaschi, Shane Cansdell-Sherriff, David Carney, Jason Davidson, Luke Devere, Ersan Gulum, Jonathan Mckain, Lucas Neill, Luke Wilkshire, Michael Thwaite, Michael Beauchamp, Jade North, Sasa Ognenovski, Matthew Spiranovic, Matthew Thompson, Adam Sarota, Brett Emerton, Brett Holman, Carl Valeri, Christopher Herd, Harry Kewell, Jason Culina, Benjamin Kantarovski, Neil Kilkenny, Matthew McKay, Mile Jedinak, Aaron Mooy, Oliver Bozanic, Richard Garcia, Thomas Oar, Dario Vidosic, David Williams, Archie Thompson, Alex Brosque, Joel Griffiths, Joshua Kennedy, Brent McGrath, Nathan Burns, Nikita Rukavytsya, Robbie Kruse, Ryan Griffiths, Scott McDonald, Tim Cahill.
Jason Davidson is the son of former Socceroo Alan Davidson. Jason is playing in Portugal.
Alan Davidson was involved in an amazing incident in the 1980s when the senior Socceroos played their one and only game in Tasmania - at KGV Park.
He swallowed his tongue and spent the night in the Royal Hobart Hospital. Team officials begged the local media to keep the incident quiet as they did not want to jeopardise Davidson’s chances of joining Nottingham Forest.
I buried references to the incident deep in my match report for Melbourne’s “Soccer Action" and got a pasting from the editor, the late Laurie Schwab, who felt it should have been headline news.
Chris Herd is another interesting inclusion. Raised in Perth, he recently made his debut in the English Premier League with Aston Villa.
Injury doubts surround Josh Kennedy and Archie Thompson and Socceroo fans will be hoping they pass muster.
Who is Ersun Gulum, you may well ask?
He was born in Australia and plays for Besiktas in Turkey. Turkey coach Guus Hidding called him up for Turkey’s recent game against The Netherlands but he was not used, so he is still eligible for the Socceroos.
Let’s just hope that Tim Cahill is available after the frenetic Christmas program in the UK.
He is in magnificent form, as he showed in Everton’s win against Manchester City, when he scored the opener and made the second in a 2-1 win for the Toffees.
What are your thoughts about the squad?
8 comments:
Useful squad. I'd like to see Osiech lean to youth as in reality he is building toward Rio and the next World Cup.
I'd like to see Neil Kilkenny get a cap. He's been on fire for Leeds over the 2 past seasons.
I think Nikolai Topor- Stanley should most definitely be in the preliminary squad. He has been an immense figure in the best defence of the A-league and surely Osieck should at least be considering him!
Topor-Stanley and Llubo Milicevic were unlucky not to make the squad.
T-S has improved considerably since he was last in the Socceroo squads. He is a younger version of Ognenovski.
Good to see Joel Griffiths in the squad at last.
Decentric
BISCUIT SAYS....
Fantastic to see Devere get a call up and there's plenty of A-leaguers in there too. Glad to see Holger's got a different view on the domestic league than Pim.
BELLBOY RECKONS...
A few CCM fans enjoyed harping on about Warren getting starts over Davidson at the U-19 Championships(despite the fact that Davidson did more in 90 minutes against South Korea than Warren did in any of the games he played collectively), Osieck has basically given Versleijen and Edwards a big slap in the face for overlooking him just because he joined the squad later than everyone else.
so this 50 man squad is official? I don't believe it
there's no way Gulum will play at the Asian Cup. Unless Osieck and Gulum have come to an understanding.
nevertheless, the guy will have 2 busted knee caps if he plays for Aus now and turns his back on the Turks.
horse
footscray
Osieck could of easily just included Gulum in the squad just as a backstop kind of thing as you never know - he most likely does realize that Gulum will not change his mind but there's no harm in naming him in this squad just so that Gulum knows that the opening is there for him. The only downside of this is if that Gulum still doesn't budge(for obvious reasons like his own personal safety in Istanbul) then it only means that his place in the 50 would of been in place of most probably Shane Lowry. Either way I don't see any harm in his inclusion. Like I said, you never know.
BILL
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