Walking frames on the pitch.

By: Afroman_GT | September 6th, 2008

Today saw A-League retirement junket players Craig Moore and John Aloisi stating that they intend to make a return from the international wilderness to play for the Socceroos. One can’t help but respond to such a notion with an incredibly sarcastic “oh…uh…yay?”.

We have an old, has-been defender who gets carded more frequently than any other A-League player, who lost out in preference to Titus Bramble in a race for new contracts at Newcastle United, and so on (we all know where this is going)… coming out of retirement in an attempt to take a national team spot off the next generation of defender when we all know that Craig Moore will be of no use at all to the national team by the time the World Cup rolls around in 2010. We should be building towards the WC and developing the team we intend to take, not bringing back an old team that will be of little use. Why dont’ we try and coax Alex Tobin and Tony Vidmar out of retirement while we’re at it?? Hell, lets go the whole 9 yards and get Jonny Warren to play too.

Then there’s John Aloisi, which is almost as bad. I hesitate to suggest that Brett Holman would be of more use up front, but you catch my drift. There are many players more deserving of a Socceroos spot on current form. ex A-Leaguers Bruce Djite and Nathan Burns surely should be getting a look in before Aloisi, so should Macca, even an injured Joshua Kennedy would be of more use. And then there’s the next generation of players in the likes of Zullo, Kruse, Rukavytsya and company all very capable players who will be looking to show what they can do and win a spot for the next world cup and we want to rob them of a spot for these has-beens?

I hear what you’re saying “But without Aloisi taking that penalty we might not have made the world cup!” but that was in the past, and we can’t continue to select him on the basis of something he did in excess of two years ago. All sloppy sentiment in football gets you is a reputation for being vulnerable to sentiment.