‘We’re disappointed’: Arnold’s Socceroos tenure could hinge on China qualifier

Graham Arnold is set to face a grilling from his bosses at Football Australia next week over the Socceroos’ horror September window, which has turned their next World Cup qualifier against China into a clash that could define his tenure as national team coach.

FA chief executive James Johnson threw his full support behind Arnold on Friday, but said it was up to him to appropriately diagnose and resolve the problems which caused last week’s shock 1-0 defeat to Bahrain on home soil and Tuesday night’s hollow 0-0 draw with Indonesia in Jakarta.

Arnold is being given a few days to “disconnect”, Johnson said, before reporting to FA’s new offices at the Sydney Cricket Ground to meet with the federation’s top brass – including head of national teams Gary Moretti, high-performance chief Andrew McKenzie and chief football officer Ernie Merrick – to review the two results.

Johnson stressed the meeting was “not exceptional” and was the typical course of action for FA after all international windows, but the nature of the Socceroos’ recent performances and the precarious status of their World Cup qualification campaign has undeniably increased the tension surrounding the team and placed Arnold’s methods under new levels of scrutiny.

After two of 10 matches in the third round of Asian qualifying, Australia sit fifth in Group C, three points adrift of Saudi Arabia, who sit second. Only the top two teams will book their spots at the 2026 World Cup in this round; those who finish third and fourth will progress to the fourth round, in which six teams will fight it out for two more direct berths, while there is a further fifth round, from which one team will progress to the intercontinental play-offs.

With the tournament expanding to 48 teams, and 8.5 spots now available to teams from Asia, the expectation was that Australia’s path to the World Cup would be much smoother than in the past two cycles, in which they’ve had to negotiate the play-offs to reach Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 - particularly given, as Arnold himself has previously acknowledged, the Socceroos’ playing stocks are stronger and deeper now than they have been in his five-year tenure.

Australia coach Graham Arnold has plenty to think about.Credit: Getty Images

“It’s not where we want to be, naturally,” Johnson told this masthead. “We’re disappointed with where we ended after the first two games, but we’re certainly not panicking.

“Right now, we need cool and calm leadership, and we need to ask the right questions and provide the right support to ensure that Arnie and the team are set up for the upcoming match against China. That match obviously becomes very important. But we have faith in Arnie, and he’ll do some reflecting, and he’ll get the team ready for that match.

FA chief executive James Johnson.Credit: Getty

“Arnie really needs to analyse what went wrong in that window, and he’s doing that. That’s the kind of coach he is. He’ll be analysing where he went wrong, and then he’ll be coming up with solutions.”

The Socceroos will play China, who are bottom of Group C with zero points, at Adelaide Oval on October 10, and then face a daunting clash five days later with Japan, who scored 12 goals and conceded none in their first two games.

Asked directly if FA would contemplate a change of coach if the Socceroos’ results continued to nosedive in the next window, Johnson said: “Any World Cup qualifying process ... it’s a rollercoaster. It’s hard, and there’s going to be ups, there’s going to be downs. There’s a long, long way to go.

“Right now, we’re asking Arnie to focus on what he saw in these last two matches, where he thinks the issues are, do the right diagnosis and then come up with the right decisions so that the team wins against China. That’s our only focus right now: it’s China and Adelaide.”

Meanwhile, FA is set to appoint an interim Matildas coach in the next seven to 10 days, Johnson said, as the search for a permanent replacement for the departed Tony Gustavsson continues over the coming weeks.

The federation announced on Friday that the Matildas would face Chinese Taipei twice in December, with friendlies to be played at AAMI Park and Geelong’s GMHBA Stadium. Their only other fixture confirmed for the remainder of 2024 is a clash with Germany on October 29 in Duisburg.

“The [interim coach] will be appointed to ensure that the permanent coach process that we’re going through allows us to get the person that we want, and it takes some of the time pressure off,” Johnson said.

“We’re at a point where we’re narrowing down the potential candidates, but we’re also doing a lot of planning around how we want to set up and what kind of coach we want, given what’s ahead of us over the next four years.”