Teams of the Decade, #18: Australia, 2006
It’s fair to say that Guus Hiddink could have had three sides in this list – his 2002 venture to the World Cup semi-finals with South Korea was probably his best achievement of the decade; his 2008 Russia side was probably his best team of the decade.
The team that gets a place in the list, however, is his 2006 Australia team – the first to qualify for the World Cup since 1974. This was, of course, in the days where they had to negotiate a tricky two-legged tie against Uruguay, rather than the easy route to the finals they enjoy today.
Their place here is largely down to the highly unusual formation Australia played throughout the tournament, which seemed to vary from game to game, but always featured two constants – a three-man defence and a lone striker, meaning it was generally noted as a 3-6-1. In reality, it was probably generally closer to a 3-3-3-1 – with two wing-backs and a very deep holding player, and three relatively offensive midfielders looking to support Mark Viduka. But six men in the middle meant Hiddink was able to switch between a defensive shape and an attacking shape fairly easily – which was vital considering the topsy-turvy games against Japan and Croatia in the group stages. Dropping a midfield player into a more defensive role meant a 3-4-2-1, pushing the wide players forward resulted in an adventurous 3-3-1-3.
Hiddink also felt relatively free to move players between positions – aided by the fact that the likes of Brett Emerton, Harry Kewell, Mark Bresciano and Mile Sterjovski were all highly versatile. Only the Schwarzer – Neill/Moore – Cahill – Viduka spine remained consistent.
The main benefit of the 3-6-1 formation was that Australia saw the majority of possession in the games against Japan (55%), Croatia (56%) and Italy (58%). Even against a vastly superior Brazil side famed for their ability to pass all day, Australia saw a decent 47% of the ball.
The shape worked better defensively than it did going forward – they took 85 minutes to break down a poor Japanese side – and the goals against Croatia were hardly well-crafted. Ultimately, they paid the price for not managing to score against an Italy side who were down to ten men and lacking any real width. With ten minutes to go, Hiddink replaced his right-winger with a second striker, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that Italy’s last-minute goal came from a rare foray forward from left-back Fabio Grosso, who suddenly had no opponent forcing him back.
That said, it was an extremely controversial penalty which sent the Australians out, and Hiddink had at least demonstrated that for underdogs looking to frustrate the opposition and yet see a decent amount of the ball themselves, the 3-6-1 (and its many subtle variations) can be an effective system.
Their finest moment was probably Harry Kewell’s goal against Croatia to put them into the knockout stages, which was a scrappy goal but it demonstrated what Australia did well – using their numerical advantage to work the ball into a wide area, and get crosses in for the attacking four.
Teams of the Decade, #18: Australia, 2006
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michael Cox, Zonal Marking. Zonal Marking said: NEW: Teams of the Decade, #18: Australia, 2006. http://bit.ly/8Ej6y4 A rare instance of a 3-6-1 formation, from Guus Hiddink. Fair dinkums. [...]
Thoroughly enjoyinh the feature although they may not technically be the best teams of the decade. Interesting, maybe. Anyway, the Australian’s played a back three which at that time in Europe may have been considered negative but also interestingly, played a 3-6-1 which I hope (and predicted in one of my posts) may be a future formation.
The Aussie’s did well. And good post too.
But for that penalty, what could’ve been…that Aussie team was imo the fittest in the tournament, and would’ve run over a 10 man Italy in ET. A poor Ukraine in the QF, then who knows…
i know this is not a proper or long term solution but will this formation work for liverpool since their fullbacks are (or up to last august before the whole team imploded)the weakest link. would the extra center half allow the other two center half to push slightly wider closing down wingers should the fullbacks were skinned by opposition wingers? This happens a lot because their fullbacks are tasked to overlap a lot and leaving a big gap for opposition wingers to exploit.
of course that will need lucas or mascherano to link up with the front 4 while hounding the oppositions at the same time, not sure if that will work as a stop gap solution
A lot of Liverpool supporters have been contemplating this idea but I don’t know how well it would transfer to a club who plays some 50 matches a season. The three man backline is pretty outdated as it is. They’d be better off just getting a proper LB instead.
The United States tried this system under Steve Sampson, he called it the “Lone Star” and he lost all 3 group games in the 98 world cup.
It is an interesting system, and can work for underdog teams as Hiddink showed. However, for all Steve Sampson has done for the US, he is no Hiddink, and throwing players with little tactical education into a radical system turned out to be a horrible failure whereas Hiddink turned it into a great success.
It had some promise with Cobi Jones being an adaptive attacking midfielder, having players used to systems with a sweeper role, which survived longer in the US, and a legend in the making in Brian McBride capable of holding the ball up.
In hindsight, maybe pairing the young McBride with Max-Moore would have yielded more results.
the big problem of course becomes that in that particular international tournament australia did best against 2 striker teams and not so well against 1 striker teams. against 1 striker teams they basically had 6 vs 6 in midfield with opposition fullbacks coming up.
this allows you to have equal numbers in midfield and superior defense but very little in terms of attack. Now you could say kewell and bresciano supplied natural width and attack which allowed the change up to 3331.
the formation works well for teams going for a draw but inside forwards and deeper strikers can play havoc with the system and open up attacking fullbacks, both italy and brazil who are very good teams had attacking fullbacks and both used them to provide extra width while the inside forwards took the 3 defenders for a ride.