VANCOUVER — Tony Popovic has emphasised that the Socceroos will need to recover both physically and emotionally after their 2-0 win over Türkiye on Saturday evening, with a showdown with co-hosts the United States already firmly in his sights.
Seeing off 30 shots overall — the most that any team has absorbed that has then gone on to win a World Cup fixture since Portugal beat England in 2006 — the Australians put forward a huge defensive shift to defeat Türkiye on Saturday evening and, thanks to goals from Nestory Irankunda and Connor Metcalfe, moved level with the USMNT atop Group D with three points.
Making their performance even more notable was that it was delivered with the youngest side ever fielded by the Socceroos at a World Cup, with coach Popovic validated on his decision to drop captain Mathew Ryan and vice-captain Jackson Irvine in favour of Patrick Beach and Paul Okon Jr, both of whom were superb.
In all, just one member of the XI deployed by Popovic had previous World Cup experience — towering defender Harry Souttar, who was excellent in donning the armband — and the coach said that the experience would do them wonders as they prepared for next Friday’s meeting with the USMNT in Seattle.
“They should get a boost, of course,” said Popovic. “[Their] ceiling, they’re nowhere near, because they’re a young group with no experience in the World Cup [and] very limited experience playing for their national team. Their ceiling shouldn’t come before eight years … we’re nowhere near that.
“We are delighted with the result. From our previous two friendly games, we struggled in the first half. We were much better this first half. We competed very well with and without the ball, which is growth for the team.
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“Now we have a different challenge. We play a host nation, a quality manager, and a quality team. It will be different. We’re playing at 12 o’clock, so that’s also different.
“We need to recover from this well, but also emotionally, we need to recover, because our young boys would never have experienced something like this. So, we need to enjoy it, recover from it, and see how they are for the next match.”
Popovic said he was under the impression that his players had escaped the game with “bumps and bruises” and “tired bodies,” but striker Mohamed Touré, who was forced off in the second half with cramps, did indicate to media in the mixed zone that he was concerned for his calf, which would require monitoring in the week ahead.
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The Socceroos headed to the airport and flew back to their base camp in the Bay Area immediately after their win, with Popovic and his staff determining that the rapid return would put them in the best position to prepare for the United States.
“We’re travelling back tonight, so we won’t be back until maybe 4 a.m., so that’s unusual,” he explained. “But we feel that that will help us get back into our base camp, our familiar surroundings, food, hotel, training pitches, so we made that decision.
“I’ll be about recovery the next two or three days, and making sure that everyone’s recovered physically, but also, as I said earlier, emotionally. We’re proud of what’s happened, but once we’re back home and we wake up tomorrow, we need to start thinking about moving on to the next challenge.
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“Because we’ve had a wonderful result, but we don’t want to have a poor performance now against the U.S.
“A good performance gives us a chance, and that’s the minimum that’s required at the World Cup, and we need to make sure that we have a squad ready and able to perform as well.”
