Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek is widely known as a pragmatist. It extends even to whether the Socceroos will be drawn in the same group with his country, the Netherlands. He has no special feeling and shrugs it off.
”I have to be honest, I never work with the players from the Netherlands. I have much more feeling when we play South Korea [in a recent friendly in Seoul] because all those players were my players. People forget that part because I’m Dutch.”
As for the Socceroos themselves, Verbeek says he has no fear drawing anyone of the 32 teams.
”For the rest, I don’t think we have to be afraid of any team in the world. We all know the mentality of the Australian players, because that’s what I’ve learnt in the last two years. They never give up.”
Fabio Capello has already knocked Spain’s chances of winning, picking Brazil but Pim Verbeek believes that Spain will be hard to stop.
”At this moment Spain is the best team. Normally Brazil and Argentina are there, but I’m very impressed with Spain at the moment.”