Hiddink proud of team

Socceroos coach Guus Hiddink had nothing but praise for the effort of his players against Brazil and believes that morale is high going into crunch final group game against Croatia.

Socceroos coach Guus Hiddink had nothing but praise for the effort of his players against Brazil and believes that morale is high going into crunch final group game against Croatia.

“I-m, of course, not happy with the result,” said Hiddink. “But the way the team acted during almost the whole game; if you consider where we come from, we can be proud of the team and how they performed and how their attitude was.

“I think the little bit of difference was they are a little bit more level when they are coming into the box.

“In the second half, we had two or three good opportunities, but we failed to make a goal.”

Asked whether morale had been hit by the loss to the world champions, Hiddink believes the morale is even higher than before because the players were not happy with the result of the game.

“There is no doubt about the morale, even after this loss the morale is very high,” Hiddink said emphatically. “So its more a case of how do we approach this game (against Croatia), tactically and mentally, but the morale is always high.

“They are eager and ambitious to go into the next round.”

“We hope to go through, but even in a worse case scenario the morale will stay very high, because these players are making a huge impression worldwide and that-s why I am happy with them.”

Asked whether he thought the referee was biased towards Brazil, given the foul count of 25 to 9 in their way

“During the game and then afterwards I have to cool down a little bit,” Hiddink was guarded in his comments. “During the game when there was a 50/50 situation, or 60/40 then I had the impression as you are suggesting in your question. But let-s be honest it was not decisive.”

Asked what aspects of the game he was happy with, Hiddink was quick to praise the team and the fact it forced Brazil to go away from its usual game plan.

“Brazil I think was not having the power to dominate the Australian team the way they like to,” he said with particular satisfaction.

“When Robinho and Fred came in, they could play even more on the counter, which they did. I think that is a credit to the Australian team to force the world cup winner to counter-attack, which is normally the other way around.