Australia’s 39-Man Squad

By: Martha | January 30th, 2008

SQUEE! When he announced his first call-ups a week ago, few expected new Australia coach Pim Verbeek to be quite so welcoming: He named 39 players to his squad ahead of next week’s World Cup qualifier against Qatar. Thirty. Nine. The squad is split almost exactly down the middle between the 20 A-League-based players, who will reportedly spend about a week in camp, and the 19 who ply their collective trade in Europe, the majority of whom won’t even arrive in Australia until at most 48 hours before the Qatar match.

After training with his insanely unwieldy squad for a day or two, Verbeek will name a final team of only 18, one that is expected to be dominated by Europe-based players — many of whom probably won’t even have landed by the time their names are read off the teamsheet. Given the gulf in quality between the European leagues and the still-fledging A-League, though, Verbeek’s willingness to pin his hopes on the jet-lagged and exhausted is understandable. Because, as he himself put it in an assessment that (shockingly) rubbed a few people the wrong way, “If you train for three weeks with Nuremberg or with Karlsruhe, I have to be very honest, I still think that’s better than playing A-League games.” Ooooooh, that hurts.

The point of Verbeek’s comments wasn’t to rip the A-League — seriously — but rather to justify the inclusion in his squad of Josh Kennedy and Michael Beauchamp, both of whom play in Germany and therefore haven’t played a competitive match in weeks, thanks to the Bundesliga’s endless Christmas break. Also coming from Europe most of the big Australian names: Harry Kewell, Mark Bresciano, Tim Cahill, Brett Emerton, Lucas Neill and Mark Schwarzer, among others. (Though Schwarzer is due to land less than 24 hours before the match, Verbeek isn’t concerned, saying that jetleg doesn’t bother keepers. Italy-based Vince Grella, on the other hand, though he was called into the team has been told not to bother coming in, because a Tuesday arrival is apparently too late for field players.)

Man alive. The 39-man squad could fairly be called overkill, but Verbeek’s job is incredibly challenging — how are you supposed to establish and become familiar with a regular squad when the great majority of them work literally half a world away?