Mm

... where they're taking young players and flipping them for money, and we wanna see 17-year-olds, our best 17-year-olds playing senior football as early as possible, 'cause 10 years ago that wasn't happening.

So we've gone down this road, and now that we've gone down this road, it's not gonna be a smooth road all the time.

There's gonna be tensions when you go down in that direction, and here we have one between, uh, a national team that would clearly like to have one of the best players in the age group available versus a club that has the right to look after itself and has the right, I think, to make their own decisions around the player.

Now I, if I was in Sydney FC's shoes, I would probably lean towards letting him go to the World Cup, but I completely understand why they haven't done it because there's a few reasons.

Mm.

'Cause, um, I...

He's gotta be a good coach, right? Um, he's spent some time overseas with John van't Schip, at Ajax and Greece, and would've picked up some things, and he's an Adelaide United legend, so the other part of me which grew up in Adelaide, don't forget that as well, is, uh...

In the kind of days that have followed, what kind of ripple effects are you seeing?

uh several i guess i mean one the negative one that won't go away that we can just quickly reference and push aside is just the the welcome to country booing that was disappointing i'll never understand why that happens it shouldn't happen and i just wish people would put the game before their own um you know feelings in moments like that and just realize that um it was such an important moment and it would have been perfect if it went off hitch free um But it didn't, alas.

And I'm pleased to see Football Australia, South Melbourne, and I haven't seen a statement yet from Melbourne Victory, but I saw them repost a statement that FA posted.

That's good because we want to increase Indigenous representation in our game.

And moments like that don't exactly help that.

So that aside, brilliant ripples, wide and impactful.

People talking about the game that...

Do you reckon that is a fair sentiment?

What would be your take on that looking ahead?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think that's why everyone was so excited by this window, right? Because, um, we saw it at a level that we haven't seen it consistently with, with Popovic's Socceroos.

This is kinda what...

You know, I, I, I think about, we often ask like, you know, "Well, what do we want Australian teams to be?" And if I think of, like, two really good recent examples, uh, Trevor Morgan's under 20s that won the Asian title, and then this Socceroos in this window, I think illustrate to me the sort of team that Australians wanna see the Socceroos be, which is aggressive on the ball and taking the riskier option instead of the safe option.

This is part of the messaging that I think Popovic was drilling into the players in this window, and they said it as well in their, in their media ops as well with, you know, is, is, is just going for it.

Not, not being reckless at all, but, but taking the riskier option in not knowing that if you execute it correctly, um, you open up opportunities to attack then.

Um, if Manchester City face what is expected to be significant financial and structural sanctions, um, existential crisis for that organization, uh, how would you describe the, the direct ripple effects for Melbourne City and the A-League in particular?

Why are we missing this?

Remember, you know, eight years ago, whenever the peak of the Ange Socceroos era was, everyone was having the opposite conversation as well.

It's like, why are we being so reckless? Like, this isn't the Australian way.

We need some bloody...

And so, yeah.

Fundamentally, we just want our teams to win, although I think we do also want to see them be a little bit more adventurous than Popovich's Socceroos certainly were.

I think he just thinks that that was the way they had to play given the...

I mean, are we as good as what we think that we might be? Probably

Why so?

Uh, well, there's a couple of reasons.

One is, uh, uh, Australia and the USA played a friendly, uh, in October last year, I think it was, which was quite fiery.

The US won 2-1, uh, but there were a number of little scuffles that broke out during the game, and a- allegations of dangerous tackles, et cetera, and it was, uh, yeah, pretty spiteful affair.

So when the World Cup draw, uh, was conducted a couple of years later and both teams landed in the same group, everyone's immediate thought was, "Okay, we've-- we're gonna have the rematch now," uh, and that's gonna be...

E- everyone was-- would be looking forward to this game regardless, uh, for that reason.

Uh, but then we also have the additional reason of the way that the US soccer punditry community has treated the Socceroos, uh, since then.

So should we have been that shocked that we defeated Turkey? And perhaps you can answer that by telling us, I guess, about the star pedigree of some of our players and who we should perhaps be looking out for on Saturday.

[laughs] Do you get a sense that this is just fuel for this group, that they are embracing it? Even though they're being quite circumspect in some ways, there's an edge to it, it feels like.

This is just our Australian sporting tradition.

I, I told that to Alexi Lalas actually a few weeks ago.

We love this.

Uh, this is something we've had to deal with for forever.

You go back to, to '05 and Uruguay and Alvaro Recoba talking about, I don't think he meant it, but the, you know, Uruguay's divine right to be at the World Cup.

That sort of, that rhymes a little bit with, um, what the Turkish captain said and the idea that because you're Australia, because the game is not the m- main sport in your country, uh, that you don't deserve to be there, or that if you are there, then you're just there to make up the numbers so that the other real ...

Like, from the outside looking in, felt like bombshell selections, but, uh, you know, obviously may be different internally.

Your thoughts?

They did, and it was pretty encouraging overall, I thought, the performance.

But just the starts are a problem.

Because, you know, we're lucky it was only 1-0, could have been more.

And you fear that a team like Turkey, if they get the opportunities that Switzerland did, will punish us even more in a World Cup game.

But that's where we've got to be a little bit grateful, I think, to FIFA and Gianni Infantino for bringing in the hydration breaks, which I wrote about the other day, which just...

It was a beautiful day in San Diego.

Pop is pretty adamant that if you want to be an athlete at the top level, you've got to fuel yourself accordingly.

So how did Australia qualify? What was their qualification like, and what's been the form since?

We qualified directly for the first time in, I think, two or three cycles.

Of course, the World Cup was expanded, so it's a lot easier to qualify directly.

But we started the final phase in Asia with our first loss...

No, our second loss at home in a live World Cup qualifier in, like, 40 years.

Like, we never lose, uh, World Cup qualifiers where there's something on the line, but we did.

We lost to Bahrain at home, then we went and drew away to Indonesia, and that was the moment when Graham Arnold, the coach who had us at the last World Cup, uh, stepped down.

[laughs]