{"id":87879,"date":"2026-07-06T07:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T21:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/?p=87879"},"modified":"2026-07-06T07:47:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T21:47:01","slug":"the-socceroos-and-the-weight-of-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/2026\/07\/the-socceroos-and-the-weight-of-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Socceroos and the Weight of Opportunity\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A lot has been made of what Mark Milligan and the rest of the SBS crew said about the future of Australian football.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the aftermath of yet another painful Socceroos World Cup exit, this time against Egypt on penalties,<\/a> Milligan asked the FFA to decide what it wants to be. When will it decide that just qualifying isn\u2019t enough? When are we going to scale the way that we play so we can compete at the World Cup? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the right questions to be asking. They\u2019re also the questions that we asked after we lost to Argentina in Qatar last time around, and every other time we\u2019ve lost without making much of a splash in the World Cup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s been missed, though, is that this is the group to do it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are walking toward another golden generation that should do something in 2030. Indeed, if Australia is ever going to be a serious nation, those expectations have to be met both in the 2027 Asian Cup and then the next World Cup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This group of players is the cast of Superbad<\/em>. They\u2019re young stars all caught just before they enter their prime and define a generation, and they\u2019re pretty much all for me.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The back three of Circati, Souttar, and Herrington were remarkable all tournament but especially so under the wave of pressure that Egypt piled on them through the second part of the second half and extra time.<\/a> Of the three, Souttar is the oldest at just 27 and looks to me to be the best international centre back we\u2019ve had since Lucas Neill.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They spent the entire game getting in the way of the Egyptian attacks, with Souttar especially throwing himself in harm\u2019s way like he was Johnny Knoxville except the challenge was stand in the way of an Egyptian rocket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also, crucially, drove the ball forward. With Australia\u2019s deficiency in midfield once Aiden O\u2019Neill came off, that became our best way to attack. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an aside I don\u2019t give a stuff that two of the three missed penalties. It happens. Players miss penalties in shootouts. They were the reason we got that far in the first place. Punishing them for that is like punishing LeBron for losing in the Finals occasionally rather than the conference finals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that, as someone who remembers that Viduka missed against Uruguay in 2005 while Tony Vidmar and Lucas Neill scored theirs,<\/a> I have no problem with centre backs taking penalties.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That back three, with Patrick Beach behind them, is a genuine foundation upon which to build.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At full-back, our best and most accomplished player is without doubt Jordy Bos.<\/a> He, again, is only 23 and already playing regular top-flight football for Feyenoord. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In front of them, it was O\u2019Neill and Jackson Irvine against Egypt but it\u2019s more likely to be O\u2019Neill and Paul Okon-Engstler going forward. While they occasionally lack creativity (though O\u2019Neill bossed the game while he played against Egypt), we have a defensive block with them and the back three.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up front is where Australia needs to show proper growth over this next four year cycle, so we can stop being the team that defends well and occasionally scores accidentally and start being a team that makes their own luck.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start, our brightest spark is Nestory Irankunda at 20 years old. He shines most when he\u2019s playing out wide and he receives the ball going forward, like he did for his goal against Turkiye<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once he was subbed out of that game, he essentially never played another minute out wide.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, on the rare occasions he received the ball it was as a number 9 with his back to goal. It\u2019s just not his game. Having him play like that would be like asking Woody Harrelson to do Shakespeare. It makes no sense, makes him look bad, and makes everything look bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, Mo Toure was one of our form players coming into the tournament. After an average to good game against Turkiye, he never started nor did he share the field again with Irankunda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rounding out the front three is Christian Volpato, who was by far Australia\u2019s most capable player on the ball.<\/a> While he\u2019s a bit Nic Cage with how boom or bust he is, he looked the most likely in our last three games of making something happen as he had license to drift from wide areas into central ones.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and Jordy Bos were really the only attacking options who were really put into a position to succeed when we had the ball. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That gets us to the crux of the question that will define whether we can capitalise on a golden generation that should arrive.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I happen to be a fan of Tony Popovic and am thrilled he is contracted to take the Socceroos through to the Asian Cup next year at least, which the Socceroos should be extremely competitive at.<\/a> I hope he can show that he has more tactical flexibility than he\u2019s given credit for, and I have based that hope in the way we played against Paraguay and for the first three quarters of normal time against Egypt.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both outings, we clearly bossed the game and played out from the back in ways that would have made new Al Nassr boss Ange Postecoglou proud.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think he\u2019s a man of vision and the kind of person you can build a structure around long-term if he wants to stay with us until 2030. In fact, he\u2019s the only person that we\u2019ve had that you could say that about since Postecoglou. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If he doesn\u2019t want to stay, or if the FFA disagrees with my assessment of him, then the next stage is the key and there is so much pressure on them getting the answer to these questions right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who is the coach that can get the right balance between pragmatically trying to make the World Cup, and trying to make a run at the World Cup? Who is the person who can drive us where we haven\u2019t been before?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because after six consecutive World Cup appearances, consecutive occasions getting out of our group, and never having won a knockout game at a World Cup, we are ready to start demanding more.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for the first time in a long time, those demands are capable of being met.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is now real pressure on the FFA to meet them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot has been made of what Mark Milligan and the rest of the SBS crew said about the future of Australian football.  In the aftermath of yet another painful Socceroos World Cup exit, this time against Egypt on penalties, Milligan asked the FFA to decide what it wants to be. When will it decide that just qualifying isn\u2019t enough? When are we going to scale the way that we play so we can compete at the World Cup?  These are the right questions to be asking. They\u2019re also the questions that we asked after we lost to Argentina in Qatar last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":87880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8298,8,598],"tags":[],"hub_post_cat":[],"class_list":["post-87879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guywholikessport","category-soccer","category-special-interest"],"acf":{"md_tip_date":"","md_tip_date_end":"","md_market_url":"","tip_date":"06\/07\/2026","event_country":"Australia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87881,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87879\/revisions\/87881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87879"},{"taxonomy":"hub_post_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hub_post_cat?post=87879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}