The overall quality of the squad is just not up to it to compete at International standard. I like to think the benchmark should be having players capable of having a 5-8 year career in one of the big four leagues in Europe (Spain, England, Germany, Italy). In the Golden Gen team Schwarzer, Neill, Bresciano, Grella, Kewell, Viduka, Cahill all easily met this threshold with a very decent support cast.
None of the current mob do...and you can't include 37 year old Cahill in that.
To borrow from Paul Keating, this may be the World Cup qualification failure we had to have. Youth development needs a major shake up.
