World Cup: Former Socceroo Mark Bosnich says opening game against France will decide Australia’s chances
FRANCE is a standout at the World Cup. But it’s not necessarily about beating Les Bleus first up, it’s more about avoiding a disastrous loss, writes Mark Bosnich.
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At a World Cup you’re always going to draw good teams and, with where Australia is at, we’re always going to cop one of the top-eight seeds.
France is one of the big guns and is a team that can win the whole thing, there is no doubt about that.
From there, though, Peru and Denmark are strong, but beatable.
So I don’t think it’s a bad draw — three out of the four teams in the group came through the sudden-death playoffs to get to this point.
We’ve seen in the past that the opening game is all important and I don’t think that’s any different here.
Look at our past World Cup experiences.
In 1974 we lost 2-0 to East Germany and didn’t make it out of the group.
In 2006 we beat Japan 3-1 and ultimately got through on goal difference.
In 2010 we finished with the same amount of points as 2006, but we lost the opening game 4-0 to Germany and so that killed us when it came to goal difference.
Four years ago, again, we lose to Chile 3-1, but obviously we didn’t go in with much expectation of getting past Spain or Holland anyway.
A bad result in the opening game puts you on the back foot.
France is a standout. But it’s not necessarily about beating Les Bleus first up, it’s more about avoiding a disastrous loss.
A win would be unbelievable, a draw would be great and a loss would be completely understandable, but as long as it’s not by too many goals. So game one is huge.
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IF things don’t go our way against France, then the pressure will really be on when we meet Denmark.
The Danes were not in an overly strong European qualification group and Poland won that by five points.
But having said that, Denmark was fantastic in its playoff against Ireland, especially away from home winning 5-1.
They’ve got two fantastic players that we know of in Christian Eriksen of Tottenham and Celta Vigo’s Pione Sisto, while Kasper Schmeichel is in goal.
They’ll be super organised, and Eriksen and Sisto can cause damage to any team in the world.
They may claim to have a better case than us, especially because we have struggled for goals in the past 12 months whereas they’ve been quite prolific.
But they also suffered some results that weren’t great.
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BY the time the last game against Peru comes around we could either, A) know what we need to do to qualify, or, B) to be brutally honest, already be out of it.
We watched them against New Zealand in the playoffs and, in my opinion, in that first game in Wellington the All Whites could have won.
It was 0-0 and they hit the post late.
While New Zealand was well beaten in Lima, there was nothing in those two games that could lead us to be too fearful of Peru.
But they did qualify above Chile — who are a top 10 team — and Peru qualified above them, so that is something to take into consideration.
Peru also drew with Argentina twice in qualifying and beat Uruguay, so they’re not a bad side.
Every team in this group with the exception of France, who will expect to qualify easily, will be thinking they’re a chance to snatch second place.
A lot can happen between now and then with injuries and form and of course, for us, a lot is going to depend on who we appoint as a new coach as to how we’ll approach these games.
Elsewhere, I really like the way FIFA did this draw and based the pots on rankings because there’s a real spread of talent.
I can’t wait to see Portugal play Spain, it’s a great opportunity for Saudi Arabia to have the chance to play the opening game against Russia and I think Japan has got a really good chance of getting out of their group of Poland, Colombia and Senegal.
England, too, would fancy themselves to go through with Belgium.
Will we get through to the knockout stage?
If I had to say right now, I would say no.
But it’s not definitive at all — definitely not like four years ago — and that may change again over the next six months.
From what I’ve seen of the other teams in the group and what we’ve done in the past year, you’d have to rank them just above us.
But if I was one of the players in the team right now I’d be thinking to myself quietly and humbly, “we can do this”.
We’ve got just as good a chance as Denmark and Peru and that has to be the mentality.
Originally published as World Cup: Former Socceroo Mark Bosnich says opening game against France will decide Australia’s chances
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