King of the kids: Alex Brosque, centre, at the Football United FairPlay Festival. Photo: Wolter Peeters
Sydney FC captain Alex Brosque has no qualms missing out on the extended 46-man Socceroos squad for the Asian Cup on home soil and says, despite his form, he never expected a call-up from Ange Postecoglou.
Sydney's captain has been performing well for the Sky Blues since returning home but insists a return to the national team was never in his plans. The 31-year-old hasn't played for Australia in over a year since a friendly defeat to Romania in February 2013, the last of his 21 caps. After being overlooked for the preliminary Asian Cup squad, Brosque accepts his international career is now all but over.
"It's been a while now since I've been involved and since Ange has come in, I've always said he's been doing his thing, promoting youth and getting a core group of players while bringing in the style of players that he sees will be there again in four years' time. As soon as I stopped getting called, I knew that was it for me. I'm not disappointed at all," Brosque said.
With his attention solely on club matters, Brosque says Sydney's results have masked some of their problems through the early stages of the season, which were brought to light following their first defeat of the season against Perth last week. A late slump cost them a win though Brosque lamented their lack of creativity and attacking movement which would have sealed the result before Perth had a chance to score two late goals and clinch a comeback.
"It's about understanding where we are after nine rounds," he said. "With the ball, we hadn't been creating as much and we hadn't been as fluent in our attack and again, we still had been getting points. The points you pick up can mask a lot of that but this week, we know against Melbourne that they're defensively strong but there are areas we can exploit as well."
Sydney travel to play the undefeated Melbourne Victory on Saturday night and are cautious of the threat of their attack, which is looming as the league's most dangerous.
"They're very threatening in attack
with Archie [Thompson], [Fahid Ben] Khalfallah and obviously [Besart] Berisha to finish things off. They've got a lot of attacking options and they use them well, they compliment each other well and every time they go forward there's a chance there could be a goal. We did well to keep them from scoring last time, but looking back at it there were a couple of opportunities they should have scored," Brosque said.
The Sky Blues players paid a visit to the Football United program for youth refugees and migrants in Australia that aims to help them assimilate and adapt to their new homes through football and community programs. Sydney goalkeeper Vedran Janjetovic, who arrived in Australia from Croatia as a seven-year-old, was thrilled to help young kids express themselves in their home country through sport.
"It's awesome to be a part of something like this just to see how far this program has come since I first joined," Janjetovic said. "I'm happy to see that through football, all different races can come together and be as one. It's awesome to be a part of."
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