A beaming Holger Osieck was extremely proud of his players after they managed to defeat his home nation, Germany, in a friendly on Wednesday morning. The Socceroos produced a dogged, spirited performance after going a goal down to exact revenge on Joachim Low and his squad for the 4-0 drubbing they received in the 2010 World Cup.
The 2-1 result in Monchengladbach, which came courtesy of second-half goals from David Carney and Luke Wilkshire, was well-received by Osieck who admitted that things did not start off too well before his players showed true character to resurrect the situation.
"I'm really proud of the boys and they did a great job. The only thing I said to them after the game was 'Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart'," he said after the match.
"Our set up was good but when we weren't in possession we gave away the ball too easily. I said if we don't get a sequence of passes together then we don't get a result here so I told them to be more focused and be more concentrated and be on their toes, not just be flat-footed and with their back to the opponent where they would give it away easily.
"I think that worked pretty well and there was kind of an aggressive atmosphere where they were saying 'Yeah, we can do it' and they were really upbeat and that is what I wanted to see."
And Osieck sent a strong message to the rest of Australia, indicating that he is very proud to be at the helm of the national team.
"At the beginning there was a little bit of intimidation or whatever, I don't know, because we are Australia, we are somebody and we don't have to be scared of them," he added defiantly.
