Suffering from stasis, Socceroos wake up with a brutal hangover

Like most other tourists on the Gold Coast on Friday morning, the Socceroos would have awoken in a bleary haze, their recollection of the night before fragmented and incomplete, their spirit completely shattered, and with a confronting life update waiting for them on their phones.

Hours after they slumped to a 1-0 defeat to lowly Bahrain, while they were tucked away in bed trying to sleep off the pain, their next opponents Indonesia – who they face on Tuesday night in Jakarta – held Saudi Arabia to a 1-1 draw in Jeddah.

Gulp.

Indeed, it was a first night of shocks across Asia in the critical third round of 2026 World Cup qualification. South Korea were also humbled, in relative terms, by a 0-0 draw with Palestine in Seoul, although Australia’s Group C rivals Japan encountered no such issues, crushing China 7-0.

The widespread expectation was that, with the World Cup’s expansion to 48 teams and the provision of 8½ berths to teams from Asia, all the tension would be drained from the qualification process. Instead, the lowered drawbridge seems to have sparked a new level of performance from minnow nations for whom, previously, a spot at the World Cup was an unimaginable dream.

The sore point for Australia is that, really, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Sure, the result itself was a shock – the Socceroos simply don’t lose World Cup qualifiers at home, historically speaking – but the football they played was sadly more of the same, as harsh as that may sound.

Graham Arnold and the Socceroos have some huge thinking to do.Credit: Getty Images

For many years now, the Socceroos have struggled to function effectively as the dominant team in possession. They are far more comfortable playing backs-to-the-wall, counter-attacking football against bigger nations, like they did at the last World Cup. When they have to break down a defensively minded team, they don’t seem to know how, and resort to set pieces, long balls, crosses and diagonals rather than any true possession-based methodology. When they don’t score early, frustration rises, and their opponents get more confident; it’s a vicious cycle, and it continues to play out with no interruption.

This masthead draws no joy from pointing this out. In his post-match presser, an exasperated Arnold said, “You guys keep going on about breaking down defences”, but the evidence is now overwhelming, encompassing the past two Asian Cups, the most critical moments of the last World Cup qualification campaign, and the first such one of this one.

Arnold was desperate to give Bahrain due credit, and they were brilliant, but that’s only half of the picture. They are ranked 80th in the world for a reason. The Socceroos are 24th, but played right into their hands. This is a team that came within an armpit of forcing world champions Argentina into extra time in the round of 16 at Qatar 2022, with valid aspirations to go even further than that in 2026.

Individually, at club level, these players are going places. Australia’s current pool of players is the deepest and strongest it has been during Arnold’s second stint as coach, so it’s not a question of cattle. They can, and must, do better.

“God yeah,” midfielder Jackson Irvine told this masthead earlier this week, when asked if it’s fair that expectations of the Socceroos will be rising in tandem with their club careers, in particular the graduation of players like himself, Connor Metcalfe, Alessandro Circati and others to top-five leagues in Europe.

Joe Gauci consoles Nestory Irankunda post-match.Credit: Getty Images

“I’ve never shied away from the fact that I want this team to get better, to progress. I think that’s absolutely fair. When you see players progress individually, you kind of expect [them] to bring that into this environment and to help this environment grow as well.”

Arnold was asked the same question on Wednesday but provided a different response, revealing in its own way.

“That’s what Australia is like. The expectations are always high,” he said.

“But you just mentioned three or four top-league players. We don’t have 23 or 24 like Japan, South Korea. But the boys are flying. Every level up is a bonus for us because we’re getting better players in. We don’t get time to coach, to work on technique and all that stuff; we just have to blend them with culture and what they want, and keep the messaging simple and let them go and do what they do at their clubs and what their qualities are.”

Arnold palmed away questions at his post-match press conference about his tactics to instead talk about individual player quality, injuries, a lack of invention in one-on-one situations, Bahrain’s physical superiority, how their play-acting and time-wasting frustrated his team, the fact their opponents had a 10-day camp to prepare (his side had only one full training session together), how the A-League’s October start limits his selection possibilities, and how the ball just wasn’t dropping for them on the night. And to be fair to him, none of that is wrong.

He does not, however, seem to have the answers to the pressing questions, or even believe that those questions are relevant – but that’s OK because it does not seem like Football Australia is interested in asking them, or at the very least probing why this sort of thing keeps happening not just to the Socceroos, but all national teams across all age groups, including the women. That’s why it’s not a surprise.

Sure, there’s still nine more games to go in this round of qualifying, and with more direct World Cup spots on offer in the fourth round, this sorry night may end up being entirely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

Of course, like the Matildas, the Socceroos tend to do their best work with their backs to the wall, so a showdown with an emboldened Indonesia and 80,000 screaming fans on Tuesday night could be just the tonic for them.

Or maybe not. Either way, this brutal hangover is all too familiar a feeling.