Both sides lined up for their respective
national anthems. The John Aloisi-Cathy Freeman-Sam Burgess Memorial Stadium
was a sea of yellow with islands of red. We were perhaps ninety minutes away
from the greatest triumph in the history of Australian soccer. The clichés and
the hype were coming thick and fast.
Son Heung-min had the first chance when he
pushed the ball through Mile Jedinak’s legs in the second minute, and the Bayer
Leverkusen man would be a constant menace for the home side. A foul on Mark
Milligan five minutes later gave Jedinak a shot on goal, but his set piece curved
onto the top of the net. Both teams pressed hard in the first fifteen minutes,
and a crowded midfield ensured that neither could get the ball into their final
third with any regularity.
The opportunities came sporadically, but
they seemed to come more often for the Taegeuk Warriors. (According to Wikipedia,
taegeuk, which is what that
yin-and-yang circle-y thingy on the South Korean flag represents, means “the
ultimate reality from which all things and values are derived”. No, I don’t
have a clue what that means either.) Mat Ryan had a nervous moment midway
through the first period, when he had to act quickly to close down Lee
Jung-hyup. Kwak Tae-hwi headed a free kick just wide of the goal a minute
later, and a quick counter-attack saw Robbie Kruse find Tim Cahill, but the
legendary goalsneak’s shot was well saved. Constant Korean pressure made the
Socceroos look like the Wallabies, so often were they forced to kick the ball
into touch.
The Aussies needed to try something. Ivan
Franjic got a bit physical, as is his wont, and Kruse swapped flanks with Mathew
Leckie. But the tide started to turn the way of les diables rouges; Son had at least two shots in the
thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth minutes. When Jason Davidson was cautioned in
the forty-first minute for engaging in the usual argy-bargy that goes on at
corners, it looked like the Koreans had won a penalty, but the infringement
occurred just outside the box and the resultant free kick, which took so long
to organise that the referee’s spray had evaporated, was unthreateningly
chipped into the chest of the allegedly Anfield-bound Ryan.
It was all South Korea, which meant, as it
so often does in o jogo bonito, that
Australia would be the ones to score. Trent Sainsbury found Massimo Luongo
twenty-five metres from goal and with red shirts in front, behind, and to the
left of him, yet the Swindonian somehow got two touches of the ball before
firing the ‘Roos ahead.
Australia had enjoyed nearly fifty-five
percent of the possession in the first stanza, but would need to hold out for
another half against a formidable Korean attack. Leckie was the recipient of
two counter-attacks, having no-one to pass to the first time and having his
shot saved on the second occasion. In the sixty-fourth minute, Cahill was
replaced by Tomi Jurić for the second time in as many matches, and Lee Keun-ho
came on for the visitors, only to receive a baptism of fire courtesy of one of
Jedinak’s ferocious tackles. Two minutes later, the captain picked up
Australia’s fourth yellow (after Franjic, Davidson, and Matthew Špiranović);
the performance of the Iranian referee Alireza Faghani was starting to be
reminiscent of the 2002 World Cup, when the Koreans marched all the way to the
semi-finals on the back of some dubious officiating.
But the referee’s performance reached
farcical proportions in the sixty-eighth minute, when Kruse went down with an
Achilles injury, a recurring problem for him, and was cautioned for simulation!
The Queenslander received treatment on the sidelines, but such was his determination
to be part of history, as well as his Joel Selwood-esque tenacity, that he was
back on the pitch within minutes, desperately trying to will himself back to
fitness before failing to do so and having to be stretchered off.
While this was taking place, there were
counter-attacks and counter-counter-attacks, no-one scoring but the Taegeuk
Warriors came closest with a bungled cross in the seventy-third minute. Soon
after, Franjic became the second Socceroo casualty, limping off after executing
a tackle and being replaced by Matt McKay. (The other Australian substitution
had been used minutes beforehand, when James Troisi came on for Kruse.)
Leckie soon combined with Troisi, but there
too many red shirts at the back. Son misfired a free kick in the eighty-third
minute and failed to get on the end of a long ball from a counter-attack two
minutes later. More excellent Korean defending denied Troisi and Luongo just
before the end of regulation time, and a tired Socceroo outfit was vulnerable
to a well-timed counter-attack. Captain Ki Sung-yueng picked out the
ever-dangerous Son, who equalised in the first minute of injury time.
The talking heads were talking about Iran
in 1997 and Uruguay in 2001 and Japan in 2011, but this blog kept the faith. We
would win it – we would just need to wait another thirty minutes.
Luongo was pinged for a handball, then
couldn’t get his pass through to Troisi, then Jedinak shot over the bar. Ryan denied
Son at the other end. In the final minute of the first period, Jurić was boxed
in by a flock of braying Korean defenders, chiefly Kim Jin-su, at the point
where the line marking the y-axis of the penalty area is perpendicular to the
goal line. He managed, somehow, to keep the ball both in play and away from his
opponents, and hit a perfect pass across the face of goal for Troisi to hammer
home.
There were another fifteen minutes, and
with los diablos rojos constantly
pressing and three Socceroo defenders on yellow cards, there were no guarantees
that the home side could hold out. Ki made it a little bit easier for us when
he had a free kick inside his own half and decided to waste the opportunity by
going for the long-range shot. In the one hundred and fourteenth minute there
was piece of Australian sporting déjà vu,
when the Geelong-born Špiranović blocked a Korean attack in a matter
reminiscent of Matthew Scarlett’s famous toe-poke to deny
St. Kilda in the dying moments of the 2009 Grand Final.
The men from the peninsula still weren’t
finished. Ryan was again called upon to save a speculative set piece in the one
hundred and nineteenth minute, and the tension of the final added minute was
only relieved by an offside call. ‘In Ange We Trust’ read a banner in the stands,
and after years of underachievement under fly-by-night foreign coaches
preaching totaalvoetbal while timidly
parking the bus, our trust in the man from South Melbourne was rewarded.
Ryan and Luongo were rewarded by being
named as goalkeeper and player of the tournament respectively. The former,
whose Club Brugge team are seven points clear of Anderlecht at the top of the
Pro League, has been scouted by Liverpool, but surely the latter must now be
headed for greener pastures than the County Ground. The former Oceanians lifted
the Asian Cup to the strains of We Are
The Champions – sung, of course, by Freddie Mercury, native of Zanzibar,
who are members of the Confédération Africaine de Football but not of FIFA.
Postecoglou may have been getting ahead of
himself after the match when he speculated that an Asian nation may soon
challenge the European-South American stranglehold on the World Cup.
Nonetheless, he has brought us a step closer to that dream, and this Socceroo
team have taken a tournament of which few in this country were aware and placed
it at the centre of the Australian sporting consciousness. Bring on 2019!
Australia 2 (Massimo Luongo 45’;
James Troisi 105’) – South Korea 1 (Son Heung-min 90+1’) (a.e.t.)
Cautions: Ivan Franjic (Aust.) 6’; Jason
Davidson (Aust.) 41’; Matthew Špiranović (Aust.) 59’; Mile Jedinak (Aust.) 66’;
Robbie Kruse (Aust.) 68’
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