Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou says he’s sure the national team will be ready for the AFC Asian Cup and all its challenges in January.

Speaking exclusively to Neos Kosmos after selecting his last friendly squad of the year, the coach isn’t glossing over the fact that he’s looking to win, not place.

“We want to win it, we want to make sure that our preparations are good, hopefully all our players are in good form leading up to it and we don’t get too many injuries,” he says. “We’ll certainly be ready for it.”

The team takes on Japan on November 18 in its last practice match before the AFC Asian Cup, and will have a little bit more time to train as a unit before it jumps in the deep end.

Lack of time with the squad has been an ongoing issue for Postecoglou, who goes to great lengths to keep up to date with a pool of about 50 players.

Players are in fact given an app to log in how they’re feeling every day, their weight, muscle soreness, sleep quality, their training regimen.

This has been a source of invaluable information, and probably helped Postecoglou finally pick Terry Antonis to join the squad.

Postecoglou admits that Antonis has been on the radar for quite some time, and he’s chuffed he can use him again.

“Terry is a very talented young player, obviously I’ve been following him for a while, I tried to get him in a couple of squads, but he’s had some injuries,” he says.

“So I’m really pleased he’s fit now and looking forward to having him on the team.”

The team will jump into training next week as they enter their camp on Monday. Seven training sessions have been booked before the match.

Postecoglou has vowed to keep experimenting with the line up, to continue his work in what he calls the Asian Cup ‘pre-season’.

While results haven’t been his forte, he’s hoping to prove that throwing his squad into difficult conditions can work in the long run.

“At the moment I’m creating some artificial conditions that are proving challenging for us as a nation. So be it,” he says.

He’s been a firm believer in not turning his back on any potential players, and admits the talent pool is a little lean for his liking.

“We’re still trying to broaden our playing pool,” he says.

“We want to play a certain style of football and are looking for footballers who will fit in to that. I’ve been really impressed with the A-League the first few weeks (of the season), I think the standard’s gone up another level.”

Taking time out of his busy schedule, Postecoglou attended a breakfast fundraising event at Alphington Grammar and spoke at length about the future of the sport in Australia in breeding talented players for the national team.

He admitted that the popularity of the sport of late has taken the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) by surprise and says there’s still a lot of work to be done to make Australia the kind of nation that can breed amazing talent.

“Am I confident that we’ve got the processes in place to do it? No,” he says.

“I think the numbers have gone up so quickly that we’re still playing catch up.

“I’ve got no doubt that those processes will be right in 10-20 years.”

He says it’s the FFA’s obligation to provide all children that have an interest in the sport the chance and the opportunity to pursue football their local community.

He admitted more work needs to be done in providing more state of the art facilities to the young to train, and better coaching staff to meet the need.

My two cents:
Born in Greece, a former coach of Greek team Panachaiki and now current coach of the national team, Neos Kosmos couldn’t help but ask Ange Postecoglou what his thoughts are on the flat-lining Greek team.

Since coach Claudio Ranieri has jumped on board, the squad hasn’t had a win in the three matches they’ve played for the Euro 2016 qualifiers and has suffered in the world rankings (Greece is now 18th in the world).

Here’s what Postecoglou had to say:

“Obviously they’re going through a bit of transition as well, a lot of the great players on that team have retired, and it’s a new team and it’ll take a little bit of time.”