Patience the key for Aussies

Patience will be the key for Australia tonight against Qatar at Brisbane Stadium, according to coach Pim Verbeek and that will ensure his team will get the three points.

Patience will be the key for Australia tonight against Qatar at Brisbane Stadium, according to coach Pim Verbeek and that will ensure his team will get the three points.

Verbeek expects his counterpart Bruno Metsu to try and stifle the Australian attack for as long as possible in tonight-s important clash, but he has no doubts that Australia will score goals in the game, even if they are late in the match.

He also implored the crowd to stay true to the team even if the team is unable to get the early goal.

“My players know they have to be patient,” Verbeek said at the final press conference. “It-s not about 45 minutes or 30 minutes, it-s about 90 minutes, so if we finish the game with three points that-s more than enough for me.

“OK I prefer to score as many goals as possible, but this is international football and I think Metsu will not allow us to score five goals and will do everything with his team to avoid the first goal for as long as possible and wait for their chance.

“Our strategy will be, be patient, don-t take too much risk and finish the game with a win.

“Fans want to see an early lead and then score a few more; that would be nice, but if it doesn-t work then we have to wait. We-ll score a goal tomorrow; we-ve got enough players to score a goal.

“If it-s early perfect; if it-s late perfect, as long as we have the three points.”

Metsu, who has only just taken over the Qatar team in the past two weeks, has had little time to instil his own style on the team, but Verbeek knows that his team-s have a good defensive structure and that will be up him and the Australian players to make the play to get the goals.

“We have no idea what he (Bruno Metsu) is going to do, but I will repeat as I have said before, of course we respect them and we know what they can do, but we will focus on our team.

“I expect they will defend; go for a point and if they can nick three they will have had a fantastic game. It-s our job to find a solution to create chances and to score goals.

“They will come for the counter-attack. They have dangerous strikers; they are fast; they score goals and you just have to look at the last games they play already.

“On one hand we have to take risk to score goals and as early as possible; that-s what every coach wants. But on the other hand you have to be very alert, so they don-t surprise you and score a goal on the counter.

“It-s all about the balance we need to win this game.”

Verbeek said that making comparisons to the previous two qualifying matches would be a mistake other than that Australia can take confidence and a slight psychological edge into the match.

“That was two games, played some months ago,” when asked about comparisons with tonight-s match.

“Of course we did very well; they know we have a good team; we also know we have a good team but there will be no underestimating them from our team. I will be very, very surprised if that happens and I will only myself to blame if it does.

“We know what we have to do; we know they are dangerous; they have four points and could-ve had six points. I saw both their (opening) games on DVD and more or less they deserved to win both games, so we should never think it-s and easy game.

“It-s good to know that we can beat them; it-s good for confidence and probably they will think the other way round.”

With Australia-s next two matches away from home, Verbeek and the players know the importance of getting the three points in its first home fixture.

“We all know how important the game is tomorrow, because we have two away games after this game; Bahrain and Japan away.

“We all know we need the three points tomorrow. Maybe we don-t need them, but it makes life much easier.”