In Snatch, when Tommy is explaining to Turkish why he put Gorgeous George into a bare-knuckle boxing match, Turkish reacts angrily. Tommy asks him, “who took the jam out of your doughnut?” Turkish replies, incredulously, “You did. You took the jam out of my doughnut.”
He’s each of confused, bemused, and angry.
I’ve never fully understood what it’s like to have the jam taken out of my doughnut. My doughnuts have always been at least half jam-filled as I’ve been one or two of confused, bemused, or angry but never all of them.
Watching the Socceroos first half, however, I understood.
Who took the jam out of my doughnut?
Tony Popovic.
The combination of the chattiness of the Americans, the political climate heading into the game, and the fact that we love beating America was like one of those spells in Widow’s Bay that got everyone walking into the river toward the effigy at once, except it was a zombified country getting up to 4:45 am alarms.
It felt like we sacrificed both our most important counterattacking threat and our best Mr Fix It player for an old legend who can’t run anymore and a guy who probably is no good.
That’s exactly how it played out in real time as we struggled to get any foothold in the first half of the game, particularly in midfield.
While Irankunda was the story, I feel like not having Metcalfe was the bigger problem in the first half. His work rate down the flanks to fill gaps is so crucial to the way Australia wants to defend, and not having him left gaping holes for the Americans to sprint into time and again.
Sometimes Metcalfe can fly under the radar because he papers over so many cracks so effectively that they never appear, but when he wasn’t out there I feel like we gained a greater appreciation for him. It was kind of like the Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men situation, where a guy’s value becomes clearer in their absence.
We lost the game in the first half and now have to listen to that pig Mike Grella lecture us about how “football spoke” or whatever. Americans are also genuinely wondering if they can now win the World Cup because of what Poppa did, and that might be unforgivable.
But you live by Poppa and you die by Poppa. He’s in Luke Beveridge areas of taking massive swings and either coming off as a genius or a fool.
In the first game, with Beach and Okon-Engstler, he was a genius. In this one with Leckie and Velupillay, he was a fool.
However, this is not the time for Australia to despair. Firstly, Australia’s second half with our best players on the park was much better. We also probably should have got at least one, if not two, penalties from a referee who had a poor day, according to the unbiased Tony Popovic.
But the other thing to note is that after Curacao drew with Ecuador, The Athletic has us a 90% chance to get through to the second round. If we get at least a draw against Paraguay, we’ll be second in the group and likely play one of New Zealand, Iran or Egypt.
And with the success of the first game and the second half of the second, I think Poppa has learned a valuable lesson: in tournament football, you need to play your best players. You could feel it with how he talked so proudly about the second half. He knew it was a completely different game with those players on.
In that vein, I have a three-item wishlist for the Paraguay game.
First, we clearly need to see Irankunda starting alongside Mo Toure. Anyone criticising Mo Toure is a moron. He’s clearly the best hold-up and target player that we’ve had since at least Tim Cahill but potentially Mark Viduka. He’s such a valuable structural player that Nestory can run off.
Second, Metcalfe needs to play as much as he can. He’s such an important player both with the ball and also, crucially, without the ball. In the Paraguay game, which is going to be attritional, we need as many dogfighters as we can get and Metcalfe is exactly that.
Third – and I can’t believe I’m typing this given how much I motherfucked him when he defected – we need to start Volpato, or at least see him early. With the way he played when he came on versus America, I’m like the U.S. welcoming Lee Harvey Oswald back after he defected to the Soviet Union.
It’s open arms, brother.
It feels like the Paraguay game is going to be defined by one moment of genius. Volpato showed himself capable of those moments.
Because it’s Poppa, I don’t expect to get all three. He rarely does what the fans want, and more often than not he’s right.
But as we live and die by his mercurial genius, I just hope he remembers that we want the jam in our doughnut on Friday afternoon as the whole country ignores work.
Australia has a massive chance to advance to the knockout rounds for just the third time in our history, and, if we finish second, we have the chance to win a knockout game.
Even after that American game, I have faith in Poppa. I have faith in us.