The Socceroos met Bangladesh at the Perth Rectangle
Oval in their second match on the road to Russia 2018. It was an easy match for
the hosts, whose domination of the contest demonstrated the stupidity of the
Asian Football Confederation’s decision to expand the group stage of the
qualifiers to forty teams.
A brace of Socceroo goals in the sixth and
eighth minutes signalled the beginning of the onslaught. The first went to
Mathew Leckie courtesy of an overlapping pass from Massimo Luongo, while
Celtic’s Tom Rogić did the honours for the second goal, ably assisted by Tarek
Elrich. Rogić repeated the dose in the twentieth minute, but Bangladeshi
defender Topu Barman (note the surname) got the credit for an own goal.
Nine minutes later, Nathan Burns put the
hosts 4-0 up by ending a tense goal-mouth scramble. The following minute,
replacement gialloverdi goalkeeper
Adam Federici got his first touch of the ball. The Australians’ hegemony was
reflected in the tallies of completed passes (500-113 around the hour mark) and
in the crowd’s hipster-ironic cheer of the South Asians’ first shot on goal, a
speculative effort from the half-way line in the thirty-second minute which
went well high and well wide.
In the sixty-first minute, Melbourne City
midfielder Aaron Mooy set sail with an outside-the-area strike that gave the
‘Roos a 5-0 lead. Leckie and Rogić were substituted off soon after for Tim
Cahill and Chris Ikonomidis; the Shanghai Shenhua forward tried in vain in the
final minutes to give the Westralian crowd the headed goal they had come to see.
Bangladesh failed to get the scalp of the
Aussies at soccer, but a little birdy tells me that they’re soon being visited
by an Australian team in another sport: an Australian team who are playing just
rubbish enough to lose to them. Good luck, fellas.
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