Why Socceroos and Samurai Blue fans can expect more of the same
Mike Tuckerman
On a nondescript Wednesday night in front of just over 5,000 fans at Hiroshima's unloved Big Arch Stadium, Socceroos striker Graham Arnold knocked home his third goal of the J.League's second stage in the penultimate game of the 1997 season.
Having been brought to Japan by Scottish-born former Socceroos coach, Eddie Thomson, international commitments and the form of Japan striker Takuya Takagi meant Arnold was in and out of the Sanfrecce starting eleven for the second stage of that campaign.
But one player Arnold got to know in his first season in Hiroshima was Hajime Moriyasu - then a hard-nosed defensive midfielder who started his professional career at Sanfrecce's precursor company team, Mazda.
Moriyasu played 64 minutes of that Wednesday night J.League encounter against the league's bottom side Vissel Kobe, before joining Kyoto Purple Sanga on loan the following season.
And he scored his only international goal in a friendly against Australia in Wollongong, although Arnold - who was a lynchpin of those mid-90s Socceroos sides - missed that particular series.
So Arnold and Moriyasu were familiar with each other even before they embarked on their managerial careers. What's remarkable is how similar the debate has been in Australia and Japan over their respective nation's premature Asian Cup 2023 exits.
"My head is about to explode from overthinking," said defensive midfielder Hidemasa Morita following Japan's surprise 2-1 quarter-final defeat to Iran - a match in which central defender Ko Itakura conceded the winning penalty six minutes into stoppage time.
"There needs to be more pointers from the outside (from the coaching staff), advice, something the team as a whole is thorough on," he added.
"It's not the first time where this team allows the opposition to control the match due to lacking thoroughness, and it's something that happened in this tournament as well."
After starting the tournament with an unconvincing 4-2 win over Vietnam, a shock 2-1 defeat to Iraq meant the Samurai Blue needed to beat Indonesia to guarantee a spot in the Round of 16. They negotiated that test convincingly enough, but came unstuck against an Iran side that went on to lose to eventual champions Qatar in the semi-finals.
"We need to be clearer about how we move as a team and which areas of the field we should aim at… and saying that we lacked the individual quality while those issues are right in front of us is an excuse," complained Sporting Lisbon midfielder Morita - in what was a rare case of a Japanese player speaking critically about the national team's set-up.
And yet Australia's tournament ended up looking remarkably similar to Japan's.
After a workmanlike 2-0 win over minnows India, the Socceroos needed a solitary Jackson Irvine goal to see off war-torn Syria, before Uzbekistan held the Aussies to a 1-1 draw in the final group stage game.
A 4-0 win over regional rivals Indonesia in the Round of 16 drew criticism back home for the laboured manner of victory, with two of the goals coming in the final two minutes of the game.
That's been a familiar complaint ever since Arnold took charge for his second spell as Socceroos coach, even if a thoroughly unexpected trip to the knock-out stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup temporarily silenced the critics.
And the complaints about Arnold's side all follow a familiar pattern; the Socceroos are too physical, there are few technically accomplished players in the side, Arnold relies too heavily on psychological mantras to motivate his players.
Much of the criticism stems, at least in part, from the fact that many critics simply dislike Arnold's personality.
A gruff character at the best of times, Arnold has spent little time worrying about his public persona - sometimes snapping at journalists and giving mercurial answers to questions that often appear to bear no resemblance to reality.
"It's a huge pass, we scored nine goals, conceded three and one of those was a penalty and the other was a free-kick from one of the best players in the world," Arnold told the Australian Associated Press in summing up Australia's tournament.
The Aussies were a minute away from booking a semi-final spot after they took a deserved 1-0 lead in their quarter-final with South Korea, before substitute Lewis Miller brought down South Korean star Son Heung-Min in the sixth minute of stoppage time - allowing Hwang Hee-chan to smash home the resultant penalty.
Miller was at fault again when his foul handed the Koreans a free-kick on the edge of the penalty area in the first half of extra time, allowing the talismanic Son to curl his effort straight into the top corner.
It was a frustrating exit for an Aussie side barely 60 seconds away from a spot in the final four, yet somehow strangely in keeping with the sort of football fans have come to expect from the second coming of Arnie.
The question now is whether the Japan Football Association and Football Australia stick with a couple of coaches whose footballing philosophies seem to have evolved little from their playing days in the 1990s.
Both will be wary of turning to a foreign coach, not least because Jürgen Klinsmann fared little better when his heavily fatigued South Korea side crashed out in the semi-finals.
Realistically, there'll be little appetite from either federation to overhaul their national team coaching departments now that qualifying for the 2026 FIFA World Cup is already under way.
Which means Samurai Blue and Socceroos fans will probably need to get used to a familiar sight - tough, physical football, interspersed with glimpses of individual brilliance, overseen by coaches who win the games expected of them without ever seeming capable of taking their respectives teams to the next level.
Mike Tuckerman is a columnist for The Roar
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