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Toure - our best CF prospect since Viduka?

B

Bunch_of_hacks

Academy Recruit
Joined
Jan 29, 2025
Replies
17
Doing the club comparison of socceroos using ELO on the other thread I made, the player that stood out to me the most was Mohammed Toure. He's only 20 but is playing at a Randers team that is ranked around the 1460 mark which is quite good, meanwhile has scored 6 in 14 games.

This got me wondering, when was the last time we had a player regularly scoring at a decent European club by that age?! The last CFs I could think of was Viduka (Zagreb), Aloisi (Cremonense and Portsmouth) and Kewell (Leeds).

Even Kennedy didn't really break through til he was 22/23, likewise and Leckie were 22 (was still a CF at that point of his career). Mcdonald was 21 /22 when he started scoring regularly at Motherwell.

Surprised he hasn't got much attention, but his career trajectory is certainly boding well.
 
Yep he is 3rd in terms of early career trajectory after viduka and aloisi who broke through at a younger age at a higher level. After toure i think mcdonalds early euro career is next best i think. He was one year older and had more than a goal every other day
 
Monoethnic Social Club said:
What are we up to now in the " ........... is the next Viduka" count? Must be at least 30 players associated with that headline?
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This is not 'the next Viduka', this is best cf since Viduka, both the Toure brothers (of course anything can happen) has the potential to be very good strikers for the Socceroos.
Australia has never produced a player like Viduka before or since.
The player that potentially had the biggest upside to being the best since Viduka was Dylan Tombides.
 
Viduka of course never quite delivered for Oz.

He was elite in Europe but for us? Took him a while to get going and he was still capable of missing penalties in high pressure games.
 
grazorblade said:
Yep he is 3rd in terms of early career trajectory after viduka and aloisi who broke through at a younger age at a higher level. After toure i think mcdonalds early euro career is next best i think. He was one year older and had more than a goal every other day
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We gonna beat China grazor? Add to our thrashing of Indonesia. Socceroos now brimming with confidence and insisting they will earn a spot in the 2026 World Cup.

One minor rant. What happened to our classy gold jumpers. The current one is yellow with aquamarine stripes. Pretty ordinary as style goes.
 
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You could argue its 10x harder to break into those leagues now than when Aloisi and Dukes were around.

But he is on a similar trajectory. They sold their last forward to West Brom so there is a pathway there but I'd rather see him go to a bigger club in Belgium or France rather than England just yet.

Not sure what pulling him out of the club to play u23s does. He should be a socceroos option now imo.
 
Monoethnic Social Club said:
What are we up to now in the " ........... is the next Viduka" count? Must be at least 30 players associated with that headline?
Click to expand...
This is a different headline to be fair

He does have the 3rd best start to his career in Europe in our history if I'm not mistaken?

Still a big gap between him and viduka/aloisi at the same age, but probably worth noting he is ahead of Kennedy and mcdonald
 
Mr Cleansheets said:
Viduka of course never quite delivered for Oz.

He was elite in Europe but for us? Took him a while to get going and he was still capable of missing penalties in high pressure games.
Click to expand...
Watching him at club level changed my mind about viduka for the roos

We managed 2 balls on the deck into the box per game when viduka played, and more than half came from viduka. Nearly every delivery was aerial but viduka thrives on balls to his feet

In that era, strikers that were good at receiving aerial deliveries thrived for the roos (Kennedy, aloisi, cahill)

Mcdonald had the same issue

Ironically, these days we are remedial with crossing, so if those players were all roos today viduka and Mcdonald would shine but the others would struggle
 
Richie said:
We gonna beat China grazor? Add to our thrashing of Indonesia. Socceroos now brimming with confidence and insisting they will earn a spot in the 2026 World Cup.

One minor rant. What happened to our classy gold jumpers. The current one is yellow with aquamarine stripes. Pretty ordinary as style goes.
Click to expand...
Haha yeah the new kits aren't popular

Football is really unpredictable and home ground advantage is huge

Poppa has gone for a weaker squad partly due to injuries and partly because he wants players who know him enough to implement a complicated game plan

It worked a treat last game, pressure is on for it to work again. If we win and Japan win we are almost home
 
They're not really supposedly to correlate but frustrating to think Toure came on for Australia against England at the end. Injuries haven't helped but you'd hope he'd totally kick on big time from then. He's done well but I'd love an 18 months of absolute fire.

The way our players get bogged down in these 2nd divisions or reserve teams with very little info is frustrating. Often it's 'they're training but not in the squads'. Breaking out to Denmark was the right idea.
 
grazorblade said:
We managed 2 balls on the deck into the box per game when viduka played, and more than half came from viduka. Nearly every delivery was aerial but viduka thrives on balls to his feet
Click to expand...

I always imagine if we had Ange back then... Kewell running at people, Lazaridis/Emerton bombing forward into the box. Cahilll making those runs as one of the 8s.. Dukes as the focal point geez it would of been a good team. He would of scored a shit ton more for the socceroos.
 
jas88 said:
I always imagine if we had Ange back then... Kewell running at people, Lazaridis/Emerton bombing forward into the box. Cahilll making those runs as one of the 8s.. Dukes as the focal point geez it would of been a good team. He would of scored a shit ton more for the socceroos.
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That's how Hiddink set us up?
 
ashtongate said:
I actually thought so at the time- Babalj had the same laid back self composure as Viduka, and a similar style on the ball. All an illusion of course as his career went nowhere.
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I was certainly interested in him, any player getting game time at a young age back then was a rarity. I was a bit puzzled when he was being compared to viduka

Toure's start to his career is much more promising - starting or playing regularly in a decent league at u21 is nothing to sneeze at given how few players we have produced in the a league era can achieve that in their prime let alone as a kid
 
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