The commentariat reaction to the Socceroos’ draw with Paraguay was predictably smug and downbeat. The Athletic said the Bay Area “needs” some “box office” after the game, while other morons on social media wondered about whether the two sides had pulled a “Disgrace of Gijon” and played for a draw.
Nonsense.
Australia tried to win the game. Jordy Bos drove into the box and almost scored in the 89th minute, while Australia took a number of genuine shots from distance, while Paraguay did what they do and tried to break on the counter.
While you expect criticism of Australian and South American football from European and North American writers, who love nothing more than to be smug about how nothing good in football can come from outside Europe unless it’s Brazil, even the Australian commentariat was relatively downbeat.
Almost every piece talked about a drab game and a great result for the country.
While clearly I agree on the second point, I disagree on the first.
That game was a prototype for the World Cup in four years, when this team is primed for a run. Tony Popovic said it himself when he said “in four to eight years this should be a special group”.
This game was proof of concept.
It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a statement of intent. It was like Spielberg making Duel before Jaws, or Scorsese doing Mean Streets before Goodfellas. It was an indicator of what’s to come, even if what’s happening now isn’t quite the finished product.
I can’t ever remember being this positive about the future of Australian international football.
Outside of the Golden Generation, Australian football has always been pragmatic. As a football nation, we’re at our most comfortable sitting in a low block, being extremely physical, and relying on our athletes to win the game.
Outside of a brief blip where Ange Postecoglou asked us to ask more of ourselves, and we chased him out of the top job in the country for it, that is who we are. We’re the Jason Statham of international football: we do what we do and sometimes it’s good and other times it’s Wrath of Man.
But against Paraguay, we were different. We bossed the game with 56% of the ball, generated five shots on goal and completed about 100 more passes than Paraguay. While we lacked end product, failing to create anything in the way of big chances, we created chances to create big chances that we should be able to convert in the future.
Neither Volpato nor Bos are older than 23.
Then at the tip of the spear was Irankuna. While he was suffocated out of the game against Paraguay and is better suited to playing in wider spots, he has undeniable quality on the ball.
He’s 20.
Rounding out the front 3 was Connor Metcalfe, who was a little less influential against Paraguay but dominated against Turkiye and even the US when he came on.
He’s 26.
Our defence, which felt borderline impenetrable at times, is already impressive and it’s led by the veteran Harry Souttar at 27, with Ale Circati (22) and Lucas Herrington (18) on either side of him. Herrington especially was a revelation, playing a near perfect game in his World Cup debut. Between the three of them we are genuinely going to be hard to break down now and especially into the future.
It’s true across the park for Australia. Among the players who played against Paraguay, only Jackson Irvine and Aziz Behich are unlikely to be there in 2028 and only Harry Souttar and Aiden O’Neill are going to be over 30.
Despite the youth and inexperience of the Socceroos, we still clearly had the better of a Paraguay team that beat Brazil and Argentina in qualifying .
That is a success and to cast it in any other way is disingenuous.
While I assume we’ll return to our stubborn pragmatism against Egypt, for the first time in a long time I can see a world where an Australian national team should be able to hold its own on the ball against a more established nation. And while we (probably) aren’t going to win the World Cup we can beat Egypt either through pragmatism or expansiveness, but more likely the former.
We have proven that we have the pragmatisim – the haramness if you will – to make life annoying already.
Popovic knows that this World Cup is setting us up for the next World Cup, but this team is already hard to beat now. With what we just saw against Paraguay, we now know that they have enough quality to be more than just “hard to beat”.
That’s a success. Don’t let the downbeat commentary tell you otherwise.