What do you make of an international football team whose recent top goalscorer is its regular central-defender? This is the Socceroos’ current situation with big Harry Souttar having scored eleven goals in twenty games for the national team. Very few strikers average more than a goal every other game, so the big man’s contribution is remarkable. His consistency at international level for Australia is also very impressive as he has come up against the best current strikers and attacking players in the world already including Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, André Giroud and Harry Kane. Though not yet in the league of goalscoring central defenders like Real Madrid’s Sergio Ramos and Barcelona’s Gerard Piqué, Souttar is a great weapon to have for his club, Leicester City, and his country. Incidentally, Harry Souttar’s brother John has thrown in his lot with Scotland where both he and Harry were born. Their mother is Australian.
It is true that most of Souttar’s international goals have come against Asian countries whose players tend to be significantly shorter in stature and from corner kicks where he is a huge presence near to goal when an in-swinging kick arrives. But he reads the game well and works extremely hard with his team-mates in defence, but also in attack. When he is not scoring, he can often take the opposition central defenders out of the play to allow Kye Rowles or Mitch Duke or midfielder and skipper Jackson Irvine to get that tiny bit of space to make an impact. If it takes two to mark him, that is one less for the others to contend with.
He has done this without regular first team games for his English Premier League club Leicester City. For some reason the current manager, Enzo Maresca, prefers a couple of smaller, perhaps more mobile, central defenders. Also big Harry had to contend with an extended spell on the sidelines as he recovered from a torn ACL. So he has had much less first team football at a high level than most of his Socceroo colleagues. But you would hardly know this from his performances for his country and for his coach, Graham Arnold, who has believed in him from the start of his international career. Arnold selected him for the last Olympic Games where Souttar was influential in the upset victory over Argentina in the Olyroos’ opening game. Arnold picks quality players, but above all he picks quality characters and Harry Souttar is one of the strongest going around. Australia is very lucky to have him, and he is the kind of player and person you can build an exceptional team around.
More from Roy Hay HERE
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Thanks, Roy. I, too, am a big Harry Souttar fane.
I wonder about Harry’s future. He’s struggling to get game time at Leicester (on the bench for all of last night’s win at Sunderland) and with the Foxes on the brink of promotion to the Premier League, does he keep his place in the squad? He needs to get a better go at it than he’s getting at Leicester. Is he good enough for a permanent PL spot?
I think so Damien, but then I have never coached professionally. He reads the game well, like Greg Williams if you want a footy example. He thinks two moves ahead so his positioning is usually spot on. Messi did him in the last Argentina game, but then Messi does most defenders! But there will always be questions about Harry until he gets his chance, and he does not appear to be getting that where he is at the moment.
And yet I’ve read somewhere that Sheffield United wanted him during the January transfer window and Leicester did not allow that to happen and here he is still warming the bench at the foxes and not being used at all. What gives?