For all the jubilation the Socceroos experienced in qualifying for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, their sixth in a row, they didn’t get much time to savour it together. Some needed to get back to their in-season clubs and made a quick dash to Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz Airport. Others had been part of an Abu Dhabi-based training camp before the window and were eager to see their families again after over a month on the road. Martin Boyle, denied a repeat of his qualification celebrations from four years ago by Saudi Arabia’s status as a dry country, was instead off to Disneyland with his family.
It was also nearly 2 a.m. by the time they finally got back to their hotel after the 2-1 win over Saudi Arabia that booked qualification, ensuring that fatigue was also doing its bit to blunt celebrations, too. Availability being the best ability, Riley McGree and Milos Degenek had yet to dash off for their respective offseasons and were brought into a large events space to record interviews with media outlets just waking up back in Australia. Patrick Yazbek, meanwhile, took a moment to sit and eat with his family, who had made the trip to Jeddah and been rewarded by being on hand for his first start in green-and-gold.
Perhaps celebrations were also slightly less boisterous because — unlike recent qualifications — this one had been relatively angst-free; there was no need this time around for a massive outpouring of relief as built-up reserves of tension and dread were released. After a dramatic 1-0 win over Japan in Perth the week prior, the Australians had travelled to Jeddah knowing they needed only to avoid a defeat by five goals or more to ensure progression. Goals from Connor Metcalfe and Mitchell Duke then left no doubt and secured progression without the need for a playoff for the first time since the 2014 World Cup. Simple, almost anticlimactically so, for Australian football.
Just about nine months had passed since the side marked a winless opening window in the third phase of qualification, lowlighted by a 1-0 loss to Bahrain on the Gold Coast that marked just the second defeat for the Socceroos in a “live” World Cup qualifier on home soil since 1981. After six years in charge, Graham Arnold stood down in the wake of those games and, in his place, Football Australia turned to Tony Popovic. The first member of the side’s 2006 “Golden Generation” to be entrusted to lead it from the dugout, the austere coach was brought in with a simple remit: get the side back on track and qualified.
Even before the scoreless draw with Indonesia that ultimately marked the final game of Arnold’s tenure, things in Jakarta had hardly proceeded in a manner to soothe a restless soul. Losing Kusini Yengi to a red card in the demoralising loss to the Bahrainis, the stifling heat and humidity of the megapolis blanketed preparations, before a torrential downpour forced the cancellation of the team’s familiarisation session at the Gelora Bung Karno stadium; a visit by the late Pope Francis to the venue the week prior had taken a toll on the surface, which was evident during the game, and a visibly frustrated Arnold shook his head as he led the team to one of the surrounding training fields. “A nightmare,” is how he described it.
In the limited questions a frustrated Arnold fielded in the wake of the 0-0 draw that followed, he said, “I’ve got to go home and do a lot of thinking.”
With the benefit of hindsight, that was obvious foreshadowing for his imminent resignation. At the time, though, the thought that the veteran would opt to step down in the middle of a qualification campaign, with a must-win game against China and trip to Japan just weeks away, wasn’t considered likely. It felt like change would happen at some point but — with more than 100-days’ break coming up after the November window — the most likely time for it, be it by Arnold’s hand or the federation’s, felt like it would come then.
Yet as the Socceroos party boarded flights and began the journey home from the Indonesian capital, there was a sense that something was different within the group. Arnold had been battling fatigue and a level of disillusionment since the side’s quarterfinal exit at the Asian Cup earlier in the year, a tournament he felt was there for the taking, and he was now faced with this. The veteran coach had deliberately fashioned himself as a lightning rod for his players during his tenure — he was always very aware of the reception some of his repeated phrasing and messages elicited but also knew the ire they drew focus from elsewhere — which made his comments during that window all the more revealing. Rather than defending them, Arnold threw the onus onto the players for their struggles in front of goal — saying he couldn’t score for them — while decrying the media’s focus on the Socceroos’ inability to break down low blocks. Every coaching tenure has a use-by date and, if it hadn’t already been reached, it certainly appeared to be close.
“If you had a lemon and you squeezed the lemon, is there any juice left in it?” Arnold’s long-time friend, legendary NRL coach Wayne Bennett asked him in a phone call following the Bahrain loss.
“No,” was Arnold’s response.
“You’ve answered your own questions, and all the best,” was Bennett’s reply.
When news of the resignation came, it took many off guard; to the extent that Arnold had to take steps to reassure friends and families that his sudden exit wasn’t health-related. One of the defining features of Football Australia in recent years is that the federation does not sack coaches; under the leadership of James Johnson, be they men’s or women’s, senior or junior, managers have only ever departed after resigning or reaching the end of their contract. And while the federation had a few more days’ notice than the Australian public to start the search for a new gaffer and film a farewell video with the outgoing one, it was just a week prior that Johnson had publicly backed Arnold to continue, declaring that “we put our faith in Graham to get the team back on path when we play against China.”
Nonetheless, contingencies were in place and candidates already identified. Arnold remarked, “I’m here to do The Back Page, I don’t want to end up on the front page,” when asked on Fox Sports if he was surprised at the speed at which the federation moved to replace him; but, with just weeks until qualifiers against China and Japan, things needed to move rapidly. Football Australia quickly decided that any new coach would be an Australian, ruling out options such as Hervé Renard and Carlos Queiroz.
Kevin Muscat was the first target, but he declined; the former Melbourne Victory boss was performing brilliantly at Chinese giants Shanghai Port but saw his coaching future in Europe and, having already turned down other moves for not being the right fit, was not yet in a place where he wanted to take the Socceroos role.
Popovic, meanwhile, had finished up his own stint as Victory boss at the end of the 2023-24 A-League Men season and had been linked with Hajduk Split, but remained a free agent. The 51-year-old quickly became a priority for the federation.
Had Popovic turned them down, Football Australia would have turned to Western United coach John Aloisi, who would have likely accepted the chance to realise his publicly stated ambition to one day coach the Socceroos.
But it didn’t come to that. And just days after Arnold announced his resignation, Popovic was jumping on a plane to Sydney from Croatia, where he had been based since leaving Victory, to be unveiled alongside Johnson and chairman Anter Issac as the next coach of the Socceroos. Having missed the game against Indonesia, he also took the time to catch up on the task at hand, too.
“He was a former Socceroo,” Football Australia interim chief executive Heather Garriock, who sat on the federation’s board and was heading its football development committee when Popovic was appointed, told ESPN in Jeddah. “He knows what elite standards are. He’s so meticulous with his preparation. And he’s been successful. He’s won trophies, and that’s what we want: we want to win.
“I think everything happens for a reason. Sometimes when one door closes, another one opens. Within a week, Arnie had resigned, and Popa, a week later, was doing a press conference as Socceroos coach. Even that moment, in that press conference, straight away, in my gut, I felt the emotion and the pride within Tony; what he’s achieved, not only as a player but as a coach and to be the Socceroos coach, what it means to him.”
With just weeks until the first games of his tenure, there was a limit to what Popovic could overhaul during his introduction to the job. But he didn’t sit on his hands, either. Soon after his appointment was official, the departures of assistant coaches René Meulensteen and Luke Wilkshire were confirmed, as were the exits of goalkeeper coach John Crawley, head of sports science Fabian Ehrmann, senior technical analyst Adam Barbera, and media advisor Michael Zappone. Two of that cohort, Meulensteen and Barbera, would later join Arnold in Iraq following his appointment as coach of the Lions of Mesopotamia.
Days later, Paul Okon and Hayden Foxe were confirmed as new assistants, the latter a long-time friend and collaborator with Popovic, but the former never formally working with the new coach. Goalkeeping coach Frank Juric, analyst Michael Mantikos, and sports dietician Julie Meek were also added to the backroom staff. Like Popovic, Foxe was a former centre-back by trade and is often the most hands-on member of the coaching staff during training; Harry Souttar noted the impact Foxe had had on the backline’s positioning and footwork in just a few short sessions following their crucial 1-1 draw with Japan in Saitama.
Those hires were the first in a string of changes across the Socceroos’ backroom in the months that followed, stretching beyond the football department itself into areas such as media and communications, and greater assistance both for Popovic and the coaching staff. Does getting rid of the in-house photographer have an impact on national team results? In the coach’s eyes it would and, given the federation had come to him in their hour of need, Popovic had the leverage to implement the changes he thought were necessary. Thus, changes were made, and the side’s staff was reshaped to match Popovic’s vision and establish a small, carefully assembled circle of trust.
As an undefeated campaign with automatic qualification followed, so did validation.
The most headline-grabbing of changes in Popovic’s first camp in charge came on the nutrition front, highlighted by the sudden disappearance of lollies. The coach had famously banned bacon when coach of Western Sydney Wanderers and has made nutrition a focus during his details-obsessed career, with Meek previously having worked with him at both Perth Glory and Victory. Thus, gone were the sweet treats and sauce on pasta.
Meticulous as the nutrition is in camp, though — aided by Football Australia’s longtime performance chef, Vini Capovilla — players haven’t had their hands held during their period back with their clubs. Instead, there exists a certain level of trust, for as punishing as it may sound to the layman, the coach’s approach to diet and the standards he expects players to maintain are envisioned as methods of not only performance but also empowerment. A spartan form of empowerment, to be sure, but empowerment all the same. If players want to perform at an elite level and reach the highest levels possible, the reasoning goes, then these are the standards they’ll need to get there.
“We brought in a nutritionist more on the education side. It’s not, ‘have that, have that, can’t have that.’ It’s to educate them on what can get them to perform in one match extremely well,” the coach said in January. “How do you back that up four days later? If players believe that they can eat and drink what they want after a game and the following day in recovery and just turn it on four days later, it doesn’t work. It certainly doesn’t work overseas.
“We talk about diet plans and details. You should spend a few days in Manchester City or Liverpool, and you’ll see that they basically get things put on their plate on what they should eat, but it doesn’t get talked about. You should spend a few days with Pep Guardiola, and you’d see quite quickly how important the diet is there, because they’re playing 60 to 70 games a year. If that’s not at an elite level, they can’t back up that performance every three days.”
Given the importance Popovic places on nutrition, it follows that this has been a focus in the Socceroos’ setup. And the physical appraisals and tests players undertake when arriving into every camp will quickly tell Popovic if they’ve been putting in work on the training track and kitchen. If you have, you’ll win a significant amount of trust. Mathew Ryan and Jackson Irvine are consistent standard setters in the squad in this regard, as is Duke, who still managed to test highly during the March window despite being called into camp late after literally being on the beach until he received his summons.
Fail to meet Popovic’s expectations, however, and your standing will suffer a blow, one that will add a handicap to your attempts to be a part of the coach’s plans. An elite mindset, in Popovic’s eyes, isn’t what you do in camp, but all the times when you’re left to your own devices.
“I’ve been working with Julie [Meek] and we did some blood tests at my club to look at certain levels of things,” Irvine said in March. “I’ve tried to adapt things into my life and game to make myself better as well. I’ve been a part of this team a long time, but if you want to remain part of it, you’ve got to be able to adapt and change and improve.”
Behind the scenes, away from talk of lollies and pasta, a message of a clean slate, wherein veteran status didn’t guarantee selection in future camps, was one that Popovic strove to emphasise early. After six years of Arnold, something of a routine looked like it had set in amongst the Socceroos. There was a level of familiarity, and the desperation and edge had been blunted in the “Socceroos Family” spirit that Arnold had cultivated. Loyalty and trust are a big thing for Popovic, too, but it comes with a harder, more disciplined edge.
“We always wore that shirt with integrity, and we wore it as a privilege, as a badge of honour,” Popovic said at his introductory press conference. “We never took it for granted … I want to make sure that the players understand that no one is entitled to that shirt, regardless of talent, regardless of age. Those values, which I know exist, can sometimes fade away or can sometimes get lost.
“We need to make sure that every player understands that honour is number one, to wear the shirt and wear it with pride and represent your country and your family.”
Admittedly, in Australian football there are few strangers, and the new staff were quite familiar with most of the players in camp. Okon, for instance, was the first coach to make Irvine captain at the international level, handing him the armband for the Young Socceroos’ clash with Turkey at the 2013 Under-20 World Cup. Across stints with Melbourne Heart, Western Sydney, Perth Glory, and Western United, Foxe had worked with or against most of the squad with A-League experience. Popovic has made familiarity and trust a key part of his thinking. But you only get one chance to lay down a marker for what is to come in your first camp as Socceroos coach. And that was recognised coming in.
“There was one line before the Chinese game, the first time, and it was that he wants us to see it like we’re playing like it’s our first cap again,” Kye Rowles recounted to ESPN. “And that really resonated with me. I can speak for all the boys; we all respect every game that we play, and I wear my heart on my sleeve every game I can and try my hardest. But in my head, that really made me focus.”
For those such as the then-uncapped Nishan Velupillay or once-capped Apostolos Stamatelopoulos and Jason Geria, such an ask wasn’t too much. But in hindsight, it appears to have been one that resonated regardless.
“The way I took it was, was to not ever take it for granted, getting selected,” veteran Aziz Behich told ESPN. “Whether it’s your first cap or … I’ve been around for a lot of years now, but you know, if there’s one thing that I’ve never taken for granted, it’s playing for Australia. It’s always an honour to come in here, but the environment we have here, the culture, the brotherhood we have; sometimes it’s tough to find that when you play.
“I was in Europe for a long time, and it’s tough to find [the same feeling].
“When you used to come into camp. It’s the best feeling in the world. You can just see the way the boys fight for each other and the way we approach games. It was a good tone setter, the way he explained that.”
Involved with Australian national teams since 2007 and with the Socceroos since the 2014 FIFA World Cup, one of the many hats that team manager Joel Freeme — one of the unsung heroes of the side — wears is arranging travel and logistics for the squad; his role includes sourcing accommodations that hit the narrow target of meeting the side’s CBA requirements, meeting security requirements, and providing ease of access to both training and matchday facilities. Sometimes, the lodgings are close to a major shopping centre, which the players take advantage of to duck out for coffees and walks during their downtime. But in the second game of Popovic’s first window in charge, things were a little different.
Tokyo may be one of the busiest cities in the world, but the Socceroos’ hotel represented something of an oasis of calm, sat on top of a steep hill surrounded almost entirely by residential properties and boasting its own misty gardens filled with cherry blossoms and even a pagoda. Aside from a few wedding parties that were taking place, they mostly had the run of the joint to themselves. The nature of international away days meant that it would have been identified well in advance of Arnold’s exit and Popovic’s arrival but, in this moment, it almost felt tailor-suited to host the team forced into a new era; a tranquil fortress of solitude for a side in transition.
“Every coach comes in, they have their way of running things and you learn off every one of them as a footballer,” Behich told ESPN in Tokyo. “The boss has come in and from the first day, he’s laid out his standards and what he expects from us as a team and as individuals. I think that was great. The boys have jumped aboard straight away. We only had two sessions in Australia with the full squad under the boss. But even when we’re just doing passing drills, everything’s linked to the way we want to play and the system that we’re going to play in.”
Appointed just weeks out from the games, Popovic’s first window in charge of the side was significant. Fail to pick up a win against China and follow that up with a heavy, goal difference-altering defeat by Japan in Saitama and conversations surrounding the side would have quickly turned away from automatic qualification for the World Cup towards simply avoiding elimination entirely. Fortunately, while Xie Wenneng‘s 20th-minute opener sent a scare through the ranks in that first game at the Adelaide Oval, goals from Lewis Miller, Craig Goodwin, and Velupillay secured a vital first three points of the campaign in that first game.
But then came the moment that, months on, is consistently cited by members of the coaching staff and playing group as the most challenging of the campaign. The clash with Japan in Saitama. Or, more specifically, the bus ride to get to the game.
The stadium was nominally a 40-minute drive from their accommodation, but a pile-up on the highway left the team’s bus marooned in a sea of backed-up cars on the way to the venue, leaving the players stranded in their seats for two-and-a-half hours before they finally reached the ground. Given that most had been hydrating heavily ahead of an intense fixture with the Samurai Blue, this left many in a rather awkward position and scrambling to find solutions.
On the ground, Socceroos staff who had travelled separately were left scrambling. Despite Japan’s FA signalling an openness to the idea, there was to be no delay to the kick-off, forcing any member of the travelling party accredited to access the playing field to spring into action and set up cones, find bibs, and do whatever they could do to ensure that warm-ups could start immediately when the bus did arrive.
“You end up just laughing,” Irvine said after the game. “Football’s a funny thing. When circumstances are so out of your control, what can you do? You’ve just got to deal with it.
“In my time with this team, sometimes when we step up the most is when you know things aren’t going quite according to plan, and we have to deal with a tough situation. Credit to the staff, the coaching staff, backroom staff, medical staff, everybody; the way that they pulled that together in a tough situation to have us as prepared as possible. Just top professionals. They help us so much every camp, but in circumstances like this, they’re even more important for us.”
Somehow, despite the change in coaching staff just weeks prior, the horror bus ride, and that it was a near-imperious Japanese outfit standing across from them, the Socceroos found a way to batten down the hatches and escape with a 1-1 draw.
“Japan was a tricky one, that’s for sure. That was a test,” Foxe would recall in Jeddah. “It was the first window we were in. We had a really good result against China and then this the bus ride; you speak to any athlete when you’re on a bus for two hours, and then you have a 10-minute warm up — you have to block that out and just think of what you can do to prepare yourself in that moment.”
A key demand of that first camp and one that has become the defining motif of the Socceroos under Popovic was to be elite.
“I can’t handle poor training attitude because that leads to bad performances,” Popovic said in a team talk in his first year at Victory, captured in the club’s Dream Big documentary. “You can train s—, I can accept that, and me and the staff will work hard to help you get better. I can accept that every day of the year.
“When I see in someone’s eyes that they want to get better every day, I’ll do anything for you. Anything. On the park, off the park, for your family, whatever your kids need, I’ll f—— do it. But give me the wrong attitude, and you’re gone for me.”
Be it eating, sleeping, training, film study, rehabilitation, the gym, or any of the other thousands of things that go into competing on the international stage, an expectation was quickly infused into the Socceroos that it needed to be performed with utmost commitment. Errors on the pitch could be accepted, growing pains as players got used to a new system managed. But anyone failing to meet the levels set forth by the coach would simply find that the next time a squad came out, they weren’t a part of it. Or in the case of Daniel Arzani, publicly dressed down.
“He has lifted the standards within Football Australia to a point, and being the former chair of the football development committee, he made my job easier, because we constantly strive to be the best we can be as an organisation, because of his elite standards,” Garriock told ESPN.
“The expectation of elite and what that means. For some of us, we say high-performance standards, but from his language and from the Socceroos language, it’s more elite. It’s getting better every single day, and the expectations of wanting the best and having the best people around him.”
For those who had worked with Popovic previously, it was a very familiar demand. That they’d previously shown an ability to demonstrate that level of commitment would have boosted their prospects for selection — if the coach is given the choice between two players who he feels are at a similar level, he’s going to go with the one he feels he can trust to deliver on his standards when the lights are at their brightest.
“[Elite] means detail in everything you do,” explained Jason Geria, whose near-decade in the international wilderness was brought to an end by his former Victory coach. “That’s on the pitch and off the pitch. So that’s diet, that’s sleep, that’s your application in training, that’s your prehab or rehab. If you need to go and see a chiropractor or a podiatrist, you need to get your orthotics right. You need to get any little thing that can add to you being a better version of yourself.
“That’s what he means by elite. That 1% can be the difference between winning a game, losing a game, finishing second or third, going to the World Cup or not. All those little details… they all add up. If you can get that last little drop to make yourself better, why not?”
There was little opportunity for respite for the Socceroos after that whirlwind October window, with further qualifiers, first against Saudi Arabia in Melbourne, and then another meeting with Bahrain, this time in Riffa, taking place weeks later. Popovic’s men managed to escape those fixtures without defeat, too: what would have been a 95th-minute winner by Sultan Al-Ghannam was disallowed for offside against the Green Falcons, and Yengi, who had opened the scoring after just 35 seconds, helped to salvage a 2-2 draw with Bahrain in the 96th minute after a brace from Mahdi Abduljabbar. Even more miraculously, they did so while holding onto second place in Group C, with Indonesia’s 2-0 triumph over Saudi Arabia in Jakarta at the same time as the Bahrain fixture ensuring the Socceroos weren’t leapfrogged for an automatic qualification place.
Mercifully, those fixtures marked the last in a hive of activity. The 120 days that followed before they would be back in action against Indonesia during the March window were the longest gap between games for the side since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I thought I’d really struggle in this period in terms of, what do you do for four months?” Popovic remembered. “My wife tells me, maybe you should stay away from the first couple of days. So I stayed a couple of days in Dubai on my own and just kind of re-grouped a little bit, assessed what happened and watched the game back.”
This extended period gave the chance for the Socceroos’ newly installed staff a chance to go back and review how they’d approached their first two windows in charge. Everything was on the table, with focus just as much on their own performance as it had been on the players. Had they had too many meetings or too few? How were they delivering information, and could they deliver more or less? What needed to be emphasised during the limited time they had with players during international breaks, and what wasn’t?
“We want to keep improving. Want to keep getting better. We want to be able to keep giving and delivering the players something new, something different that we’re adding to our game,” Foxe told ESPN during the March window.
“You’re always tweaking. We’re always looking back through the train sessions … and we’re constantly challenging each other. You have to challenge each other. That’s how you keep getting better. That’s not being negative, that’s not being fearful, that’s asking how we can get better? How can we keep growing as a staff?”
It was when the squad reunited in March that Popovic felt he could really begin to see his message settling in, not just on the park but also in the way that the players moved around the hotel and conducted themselves. Helped by that chance to get his staff together in Sydney and review their own performance, there was an air that he was more comfortable in the role, too, with his feet now well and truly under the desk and the setup around him starting to resemble the one he thought was needed heading into a World Cup. The mood was a little less fraught.
A disastrous opening 15 minutes against Indonesia om the first match of the window had portended disaster, but Kevin Diks’ missed penalty swung momentum and the game ended up being a 5-1 win. As they boarded flights for Hangzhou and their clash with China, nobody in the Socceroos’ camp was happy with how that opening 15 minutes had gone, but there was also a growing sense of trust in a baseline that was now beginning to feel familiar, and one that had withstood the storm at the Sydney Football Stadium.
“You have to believe in the core of what it is that you’re doing,” Irvine told ESPN in China. “There are going to be games that don’t go your way. It’s going to be moments that don’t go your way. But when you fall back to your baseline, when you have a core of something that we all trust and believe in, then when it comes to the end, when you see the big picture, then you should hopefully have achieved what you set out to do.
“The way that the boss and the staff came in, they set a very clear idea of what it was that they wanted from us, on and off the pitch. And I don’t think that demand has changed. Specifically, I think the calmness in the approach to the football and, in particular, under high pressure. The way that’s been handled by the staff and players, with that calmness and trust in that everybody recognises and understands their role, that hasn’t changed.”
Australia would subsequently cruise to a 2-0 win over the Red Dragons, putting them in a strong but not certain position to qualify heading into the final window against Japan and Saudi Arabia. And notable about the two wins was that whereas the Socceroos had 64% and 73% of the ball in their opening two games against Indonesia and China, this time around they had won with 39% and 51%.
Then, in June, the Socceroos restricted Japan to just a single shot on target despite surrendering 69% of the ball before stealing a 1-0 win thanks to Behich’s famous 90th-minute goal. With the Saudis needing to win by five goals or more to steal automatic qualification, they seized 71% of the ball in Jeddah and took a 19th-minute lead through Abdulrahman Al Oboud, only for the Socceroos to strike back with goals from Metcalfe and Duke to claim a 2-1 win and a berth at the 2026 World Cup.
While Australian national teams of all stripes have tended towards functioning best as a reactive side in possession, there’s a feeling that there’s less angst about this under Popovic, whose defensive, attritional style has long been established and was well-known coming in. Certainly, the side’s ability to operate as a ball-dominant side is a major question needing to be answered because — eventually — they’re going to have to actively chase games against opposition stronger than China. Popovic will be the first to admit it, and while he won’t take much notice of it, the venom will certainly come thick and fast if the questions is not answered. But nine months into the new era, being able to win games without the ball isn’t seen as something shameful, to be hidden or gaslit away, but instead, as just another tool.
“That’s the key: with and without the ball,” Foxe told ESPN ahead of the Saudi game. “We can control the rhythm, we can control the tempo however they want to play. If they want to send six up front, they can send six up front. That doesn’t change our approach to the game. Our approach will be our way of playing. How quick with the ball? How can we penetrate when the time is right? When are the moments we go to press? Is it a deep block? Is it a middle block? Is it a front press? All them tactical awarenesses that we’ve been working on will come into play when the game kicks off.”
With qualification secured, the Socceroos can look ahead to a sixth-straight appearance on football’s biggest stage. And, with the task he was brought in to accomplish now completed, Popovic will be afforded the second-longest lead-in to the World Cup that any Socceroos coach has had, trailing Pim Verbeek’s countdown to the 2010 World Cup by a matter of days.
Working on those principles of possession and press-resistance will be key, as well as expanding the talent pool and giving a new cohort of players a chance to win his trust in games that don’t carry the same level of stakes as must-win World Cup qualifiers. Youngsters such as Noah Botic, Max Balard, and Nicolas Milanovic have been knocking on the door, as have more senior heads such as Anthony Carter, and while the coach has proven true to his statement that he would never attempt to sell the Socceroos shirt to anyone, there are a series of dual nationals, Sunderland‘s Nectarios Triantis cheif among them, who have their futures up in the air.
Starting with a resumption of the Soccer Ashes with New Zealand in September, there will be four international windows until the final squad is selected for the World Cup, with it expected that the October international window will take place overseas, with at least one of the coming windows likely to take place in North America to experience the conditions and travel. There will be a nine-day window following the selection of the World Cup squad next June to provide one final round of preparation, before the tournament itself begins on June 11.
Reports have suggested the Socceroos will learn their group-stage opponents for the newly expanded 48-team tournament in December, with FIFA in talks with Las Vegas to stage the event. Investigations, meanwhile, are already underway about which of the official team base camps the squad will look to use next June, with options stretching from Boston to Palm Beach to Guadalajara to Los Angeles to Vancouver on the table.
“We always want to win, and having a winning mentality is what’s important,” said Garriock. “If we look back on this campaign and see how we’ve qualified, the way that he, his staff and the players have conducted themselves has certainly surpassed our expectations.”
