[Match 8: France vs Australia - BBC1 & BBC iPlayer (7pm GMT) LIVE from Al Janoub Stadium]

1 minute ago, craigcwwe said:

Why is that though? Did you just get lucky with those guys coming through at roughly the same time? Less money going into developing younger players etc? 

Think it’s actually because our central football federation tried to take control of youth development post that generation and have been terrible at it. Most of our best players came through local club development whereas now it’s all centralised as I understand. 

[Match 8: France vs Australia - BBC1 & BBC iPlayer (7pm GMT) LIVE from Al Janoub Stadium]

Unfortunately the quality of player coming out of Australia has fallen a long way from the glory days of Kewell, Viduka, Cahill, et all

[Qataris want last minute alcohol ban at stadiums putting FIFA at risk of breaching Budweiser contract]

We can only hope Qatar keep this sort of behaviour up to discourage FIFA from trying this again.