Osieck reflects on East Asian Cup performance

Socceroos Head Coach Holger Osieck spoke exclusively to the footballaustralia.com.au about his thoughts following the conclusion of the EAFF East Asian Cup.

We have to look at the purpose of our trip to the East Asian Cup tournament.

The main aim was that we wanted to give younger players, and players less experienced at international level, the opportunity to challenge themselves against good quality East Asian teams.

This is what we expected and from the three matches that we played we gained some valuable knowledge about this group of players.

In particular the new players now know what the demands are to compete at senior international level and the coaching staff knows more about the status of these players.

The one detrimental thing was that most of the players within our squad for this tournament have been in the off season for quite some time and not physically at their best to compete against teams that are in the middle of their leagues.

This is little disappointing because it would have been better to test our players against this type of opposition when they had a similar levels of match fitness.

But our players tried hard under these circumstances and put plenty of effort in during every match. There were definitely some individual performances that are promising for the future.

In addition there were some players that need more time to improve to be competitive at the international level.

To do this they need to get regular playing time with their clubs, whether it is in the Hyundai A-League or other respective leagues.

The top level of international football is a lot higher than this level. There needs to be another step up again for us to be ready for Brazil.