Bruce Djite is all too familiar with what it’s like to miss out on national team selection for a major tournament.
In 2008, Djite was just starting to make a name for himself at the highest level of Australian football, becoming a regular contributor for Adelaide United and earning his Socceroos debut under Pim Verbeek, just before securing a move overseas to Turkish side Genclerbirligi.
Not only that, the striker was a mainstay in the Olyroos squad that secured qualification for the Beijing Olympics – scoring twice in 13 games.
However, he was surprisingly left out of the squad by then coach Graham Arnold – who has had to make a number of big calls, similarly to leaving Djite out of the Olympics squad, now for the Socceroos World Cup squad.
One of those, included the surprise omission of Mitch Langerak, despite being in career best form in Japan.
Djite, who is now retired, opened up on those experiences and how it feels to receive the shattering news when he joined Robbie Cornthwaite on KEEPUP’s new podcast The Players Pod.
In season 2022-23, you can listen to Robbie weekly on his new KEEPUP podcast – The Players Pod, with Robbie Cornthwaite. He chats to Luke Brattan, Brandon Borrello and Bruce Djite on the fourth episode. Listen below or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
“It was very disappointing,” Djite said on The Players Pod.
“You’re testing my memory, going back all those years but I’ll never forget the disappointment and it’s always a phone call, right. It’s not in person meeting or something like that. I remember I was in my room at the club in Turkey and they basically said ‘yeah, I’ve picked the squad, you’re not in it.”
“Look, for me it was, my club didn’t want me to go because I had just signed so it ended up in hindsight, if I look back on it now, it’s not something I regret that I missed because it did give me a full pre-season with a new country, with a new team and all the rest of it.
“But at the time, devastating blow but that’s sport sometimes, it’s good to you some days and it’s not the other. For the coaches it’s obviously a tough call to make but for a player, it’s always more difficult to receive that news.”
Djite also gave his thoughts on Langerak’s omission from the World Cup squad, describing it as an “interesting one”.
“We’re in a game where obviously it’s a very emotional game. There’s a lot of opinions flying around,” he said.
“Just think of a VAR call, the emotions that sort of conjures up within people. It’s a game of opinions. At this particular point in time, Arnie thinks Vukovic is better placed than Langerak. I find that…interesting, but he’s got to a World Cup. He’s gone there to be successful.
“Even when I was football director at Adelaide United a couple of years ago, you see coaches make decisions and I’m yet to find a coach who makes a decision that they think will lead to a worse result for the team and therefore them.
“As hard as it is to understand and put yourself in other people’s shoes sometimes, it’s a weird game. And there’s a lot of weird people in it. So there’s a lot of weird decisions that are therefore made from an outsider looking in. But all the decisions that are made have a very strong rationale within that person’s mind making the decisions.
“Ten times out of ten that’s the coaches. They can honestly make or break careers. And I’ve seen both sides when coaches have made people’s careers and amazing players have just been destroyed by particular coaches.
“So yeah. The Langerak one is an interesting one, but Arnie obviously thinks that having some other goalkeepers is going to be better for not just the team but also himself as a coach.”
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