2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Australia v. Jordan at Sydney (SFS)

Needing only a draw, if that, to book a spot in the next phase in their long and winding World Cup qualifying campaign, the Socceroos faced the oddly-shaped nation of Jordan at the scene of many great international matches, the Sydney Football Stadium.

Given Jordan’s 2-0 victory in the reverse fixture in Amman last October, a close match was to be expected; instead, the Socceroos routed their opponents, whose appointment of English supercoach Harry Redknapp has been in vain, having failed to secure one of the top four runners-up spots.

The hosts were slow to get going: the first major incidents of the match were an early Brad Smith’s tête-à-tête with Baha’ Abdel-Rahman and a Tom Rogić shot on target in the seventeenth minute. Hamza Al-Dardour then snuck onside from a free kick but lacked passing options and was closed down by the Socceroo defence.

In the twenty-fourth minute, the procession of goals began. The first combined assists from Aaron Mooy and Robbie Kruse with a Tim Cahill six-yard-box tap-in. The second came from a counter-attack, Mooy finishing with a sublime strike, unmarked and well outside the box. For the third, Kruse deftly chipped an aerial ball onto the head of Cahill, acting as stand-in captain in the absence of Mile Jedinak.

Cahill’s first shot of the second stanza was blocked, but Tom Rogić goaled with the rebound. Mooy and Mathew Leckie were rested in favour of Massimo Luongo and Chris Ikonomidis after the hour mark; five minutes after their introduction, Ikonomidis got on the end of a Smith throw-in and laid up the assist through a napping Jordanian defence for Luongo to score Australia’s fifth.

The sourest note of the match was the sixty-fifth-minute caution of Yousef Al-Rawashdeh: the Jordanian forward appeared to deliberately ‘cork’ Kruse, whose injury troubles have deprived Socceroo followers of an interrupted experience of his glorious crosses and breathtaking runs down the wing. Not taking any risks, Ange Postecoglou replaced him soon after with Nathan Burns.

Los australianos hammered the Jordanian goal in the final ten minutes but goalkeeper-captain Amer Shafi’s cat-like reflexes repelled everything they threw at him. Al-Nashāmā botched a counter-attack two minutes from time, but soon found a consolation goal when Abdallah Deeb threaded through a fatigued ‘Roos defence.

Australia 5 (Tim Cahill 24’, 44’; Aaron Mooy 39’; Tom Rogić 53’; Massimo Luongo 69’) – Jordan 1 (Abdallah Deeb 90’)

Cautions: Yousef Al-Rawashdeh (Jor.) 65’; Baha’ Faisal (Jor.) 77’; Bailey Wright (Aust.) 80’; Tom Rogić (Aust.) 89’

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Australia v. Tajikistan at Adelaide

The Socceroos, presumably in homage to Coldplay, unveiled their All Yellow strip (with green socks) as they resumed their World Cup qualifying campaign against Tajikistan on a cut-up Adelaide Oval surface seemingly covered in big strips of green masking tape. Piling up a cricket score against the hapless and wounded Central Asians, they ploughed on ahead of Jordan at the top of Group B.

The sizeable crowd were barely in their seats when Massimo Luongo opened the scoring in the second minute, taking his chance from outside a chockers penalty area. Ten minutes later, captain Mile Jedinak converted a penalty occasioned by keeper Alisher Tuychiev professionally fouling international debutante Apostolos Giannou.

The Socceroos kept firing balls into the penalty area – twenty-three by the fortieth minute to Tajikistan’s one – without adding to the 2-0 scoreline, and the visitors had two players stretchered off. Looking très haut-couture in their white shirt with thin green-then-red-then-green-then-red-again chevrons, they were looking competent enough at the back until they came undone after the interval.

Defender Davron Ergashev was cautioned for collaring Giannou in the box, substitute captain Mark Milligan putting i gialloverdi 3-0 up. Nathan Burns had a few chances before tapping in an Aaron Mooy cross in the sixty-seventh minute, and the subsequent introduction of Tom Rogić, on for Luongo, fired up the Socceroos’ offence. Within five minutes, the Celtic man had netted a brace: the first a Wembley-Tor from a Mooy free kick, the second an opportunist extra-areal strike.

Not done yet, Rogić hit the bar in the seventy-fifth minute, and his team would hit the woodwork twice more. Burns’ second goal completed the rout, a mere training drill on the road to Russia.

Australia 7 (Massimo Luongo 2’; Mile Jedinak [pen.] 13’; Mark Milligan [pen.] 57’; Nathan Burns 67’, 87’; Tom Rogić 70’, 72’) – Tajikistan 0

Cautions: Alisher Tuychiev (Taj.) 11’; Daler Tukhtasunov (Taj.) 27’; Davron Ergashev (Taj.) 56’; Trent Sainsbury (Aust.) 81’; Kamil Saidov (Taj.) 85’

Women’s Olympic soccer qualifying match review: Japan v. Australia at Osaka

According to my television’s electronic programme guide, the Matildas “captured the hearts of the nation with their deeds at last year’s World Cup”. Maybe, but it sounds rather disingenuous coming from the same commercial networks which regularly slander the men’s game with talk of Hooliganism! and Flares! Nonetheless, one couldn’t resist the patriotic temptation to get behind Our Girls on the proverbial Road to Rio.

Having never beaten Japan in the Home Islands, the Matildas opened their account with a stunning 3-1 victory at the Kincho Stadium in Osaka, earning an invaluable three points. The opening quarter-hour was a cagey one, with few real chances for either side. Mizuho Sakaguchi was denied by a Lydia Williams save before Lisa de Vanna put i gialloverdi 1-0 up by heading in a Katrina Gorry cross.

From just outside the box and straight in front, Alanna Kennedy almost curled in a superlative free kick shortly after the half-hour mark. But the highlight of the night came minutes later, when the Italian referee, Carina Vitulano, couldn’t get out of the way of a Japanese cross-field pass. Her unintentional header on the half-way line turned the ball into the visitors’ attacking half, where de Vanna was ready to pounce, laying it up for Michelle Heyman to score.

But Nadeshiko wouldn’t go quietly, responding in stoppage time when one of their regular goal-mouth scrambles was turned in by striker Yūki Ōgimi. Japan had the better of the third quarter of the match, Sakaguchi and captain Aya Miyama forcing saves from Williams. Les Mathildes threw some fresh blood into the mix in the seventieth minute, swapping Heyman for Kyah Simon.

Seemingly content with coasting to a 2-1 win, they got a third goal against the run of play eight minutes later, when Emily van Egmond combined with Gorry, who beat the keeper with a well-timed header.

Japan 1 (Yūki Ōgimi 45+2’) – Australia 3 (Lisa de Vanna 25’; Michelle Heyman 41’; Katrina Gorry 78’)

Cautions: Caitlin Foord (Aust.) 94’

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Bangladesh v. Australia at Dhaka

After beating Bangladesh 5-0 at the Perth Oval earlier in the campaign, the Socceroos could have been excused for taking their collective foot off the pedal in the return fixture at the Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka. Under a security cloud caused by the appearance of ISIS in the once terror-free Subcontinental republic, the visitors notched up another goal difference-boosting win, knocking four goals past their opponents.

Australia, in their now-quotidian gold-trimmed navy blue away kit, attacked from the kick-off, forcing the Bengal Tigers to boot the ball out of their penalty area multiple times in the first three minutes before Tim Cahill headed an Aaron Mooy free kick into goal. The Melbourne City midfielder has had a blinder of an international break, involving himself in all four goals here in addition to his excellent playmaking against Kyrgyzstan.

It was a humid night in Dhaka, and the hosts’ shirts (red with green trim) were visibly moist and clung to their bodies as tightly as the players did to their more illustrious opponents. Bangladesh took nineteen minutes to bother Adam Federici, though they made their presence felt at the other end: they committed four fouls in the first half-hour and goalkeeper Shahidul Alam clashed heads with Mile Jedinak.

Shahidul did well on the twenty-eight minute mark to hold the ball in the field of play after being barged into by Cahill, but within four minutes his side were 2-0 down, the aforementioned Cahill fighting off Shahidul and three rossoverdi defenders in a goal-mouth scramble.

With the ‘Roos having seventy-nine percent of possession in the opening half, more chances would eventually come their way. Massimo Luongo tried a header in the thirty-sixth minute, before Mooy and Cahill combined for the third gialloverdi goal a minute later. The former broke through the Bengali defensive line and put himself one-on-one with the keeper, before laying the ball up to the latter, who made no mistake despite being double-teamed by two defenders.

From the second of two successive free kicks conceded by the ill-disciplined youngster Hemanta Biswas, Jedinak was able to put a name other than ‘Cahill’ on the scoresheet, finishing off Bailey Wright’s headed volley of Mooy’s kick.

Mooy and Luongo were rested at half-time, replaced by Tommy Oar and James Troisi. Not content with their limited opportunities thus far, Bangladesh tried to catch Federici napping by pumping a free kick at him from the half-way line, and frustration got the better of their captain in the eighty-seventh minute when he saw yellow for remonstrating with the referee.

The Socceroos, who had seventeen shots on goal to the Bengal Tigers’ two, played it safe in the second half. The closest they came to scoring was in the seventy-first minute, when Nathan Burns was fouled on the edge of the area but sprayed the resulting shot well over the bar, and nine minutes later, when Jedinak tried a speculative bicycle kick.

Another three points on the board for t’lads and, thanks to our good mates Kyrgyzstan beating Jordan at home for us, we now top the group.

Bangladesh 0 – Australia 4 (Tim Cahill 6’, 32’, 37’; Mile Jedinak 43’)

Cautions: Hemanta Biswas (Bang.) 40’; Monaem Khan Raju (Bang.) 47’; Mamunul Islam (Bang.) 87’

International friendly match review: Spain v. England at Alicante

It’s a pity that soccer internationals of this nature are known as ‘friendlies’ instead of ‘tests’, because this was a supreme test for both sides. For Spain, hosting this match in Alicante instead of Madrid because of concerns that unreconstructed franquistas might boo the Catalan patriot Gerard Piqué, this was their chance to show the world that their failure at the 2014 World Cup was an aberration and that tiki-taka, unlike the Generalissimo, was not dead.

For England, whose ten wins gave them the best record in qualifying for Euro ’16, this was an opportunity to show that they could match it with another superpower in their first real test since their group stage exit in Brazil. They lined up in a 4-4-1-1, with Everton’s Ross Barkley nesting behind lone striker Harry Kane, while their hosts went with a 4-1-3-2, featuring Sergio Busquets as the sole holding midfielder.

The story of the night, however, was England’s inability to control possession: a familiar refrain in the sport’s homeland. Most of the decent chances fell to Spain, who ended the first half with sixty-three percent of the ball and who often looked like they were playing futsal with themselves on the tablecloth-patterned turf.

England’s first penetration of the Spanish defence came in the seventh minute, and Raheem Sterling fired the resulting shot well over the bar. La furia roja came close in the twenty-third minute, when Busquets got on the end of a corner kick, and in the twenty-ninth, when Valencia’s Paco Alcácer was the recipient of a high through-ball.

In between all of this, Thiago Alcântara was taken off with an injury, replaced by Santi Cazorla, who proved an effective addition to the Spanish midfield. Sterling put his body on the line in the wall to stop a Cesc Fàbregas free kick in its tracks, but the Three Lions’ defence was almost exposed in injury time, when they were forced to clear the ball from their own penalty area three times in quick succession.

With six shots apiece in the first half, victory looked likely to fall to whichever side could make its chances count. Both coaches tinkered with their bench (six substitutions being allowed in international friendlies by order of Blatter), but it was the entry of Manchester United’s Raumdeuter Juan Mata, on for the so-so Diego Costa just after the hour mark, which altered the game’s complexion.

Suddenly, the Spanish lifted the tempo of their attacking moves, playing through balls and one-twos while pressuring Kane into a series of misses at the other end. In the seventy-second minute, Alcácer, Fàbregas, and Mario Gaspar combined for the opening goal, the last-mentioned executing a superb volley which bounced awkwardly past Joe Hart.

Within a minute, Roy Hodgson dragged the unimpressive Barkley to allow the White Pelé himself, (He Goes By The Name Of) Wayne Rooney, to join Kane in a classically English two-man strike partnership. Vicente del Bosque also rang the changes, swapping Alcácer for Chelsea’s Pedro and Busquets for Atlético Madrid’s Koke. But it was Cazorla who would shatter England’s hopes, firing a loose ball through a confused defence from just outside the box.

There were no further goals, but plenty of further worries for the visitors. Michael Carrick, without doubt the most Spanish Englishman in football, had to be stretchered off in the ninetieth minute with damage to his ankle ligament. In the second minute of second-half stoppage time, Rooney hit the cross-bar with a shot which summed up England’s night.

Overall, this was a match which promised a clash of stereotypes – Spanish tiki-taka against English speed and power – and which largely delivered, but also demonstrated that possession in and of itself is useless without penetration. Spain worked the ball, wore England down, and made them pay in the final twenty minutes. The Poms will need to lift their game if they are to break their half-century major tournament drought in France.

Spain 2 (Mario Gaspar 72’; Santi Cazorla 84’) – England 0

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Australia v. Kyrgyzstan at Canberra

In June, Kyrgyzstan thrilled this blog with a display of scintillating end-to-end soccer, a sort of Central Asian totaalvoetbal, if you will. They were unlucky to lose only 2-1 to the Socceroos, and it would be interesting to see what the men from the steppes could serve up at Bruce Stadium.

It had been cold and wet in the national capital, and the Canberrans had their umbrellas out prior to kick-off, while many of the couple-of-dozen-strong away support sported traditional Kyrgyz hats. The ‘Roos, playing in the familiar combo of yellow shirts, green shorts, and white socks, had chances early. They entered the Kyrgyz penalty area thrice in the first ninety seconds, Tim Cahill plowing the best chance into goalkeeper Pavel Matiash, whose lime green kit surely reminded the locals of sporting triumphs of days gone by…

At the quarter-hour mark, Melbourne City midfielder Aaron Mooy had a decent chance and Cahill followed up with the rebound, his shot grazing the corner of the goal frame. Two minutes later, the Snow Leopards, resplendent in white shirts with single navy blue and royal blue hoops at the top, white shorts, and red socks, thought they had a case for a penalty when replays showed debutante Australian defender James Meredith pulling the shirt of Akram Umarov.

There was more physicality to come: striker Ildar Amirov contested a loose ball with right-back Ryan McGowan; Amirov’s elbow and McGowan’s nose both came off second best. Cahill’s strike partner Tommy Jurić was substituted early for Nathan Burns. Various gialloverdi attackers peppered the visitors’ goal, typically assisted by through balls from Mooy, playing the role of über-cool shiny-headed regista with aplomb; the most promising was the thirty-seventh minute Burns shot, which would have been turned in had Mark Milligan got onto the rebound.

The thirty-ninth-minute penalty was more clear-cut than Kyrgyzstan’s earlier shout; Islam Shamshiev giving Burns a trip and then a hip-and-shoulder for good measure. Captain Mile Jedinak, a trusted figure at the penalty spot, hit the top right-hand corner of the net; Matiash guessed the correct side but dived too low. Los australianos led 1-0 at the break, Massimo Luongo having an injury-time tap-in disallowed for offside; the hosts had also cornered the possession market with seventy-four percent of the ball.

Mooy was in the thick of things early in the second half, getting on the end of a Jedinak pass and finding Cahill loose in the box for the Socceroos’ second goal. Four minutes later, Mooy sent a fast ball across the face of goal which a fuera de juego Cahill couldn’t get past the keeper.

Things wouldn’t get much better for ак барстар. In the fifty-sixth minute, Kairat Zhyrgalbek Uulu was cautioned for a foul on Meredith. Midfielder Shamshiev was subbed off for Vitalij Lux, a forward who plies his trade with 1. FC Nürnberg’s reserve team, and captain Azamat Baymatov, the inside of his arm sporting the tattooed words (in English) I am the master of my fate, ironically found his fate in the hands of the trainers when he was stretchered off fifteen minutes from time.

The third Australian goal came in the sixty-ninth minute, when Mooy bombed a corner kick into the six-yard box and forced an own goal from the head of Amirov. With the three points in the bag, the home side were able to rest Jedinak and Burns, off for Tom Rogić and James Troisi respectively; the entry into the fray of the Canberran Rogić met with a passionate from the knowledgeable locals.

In the seventy-ninth minute, the Central Asians had their best chance of the night when goalkeeper Adam Federici slipped over and would have been powerless to stop Lux’s shot had it been executed better. Troisi and Cahill one-twoed a minute later but the former skewed the resulting shot, before the Shanghai Shenhua striker had a blinder in the final few minutes: he appeared to have been brought down in the box, then was ruled offside (and shown a yellow card, seemingly for tapping the ball into the back of the net after the linesman’s flag was raised), then had two shots saved in stoppage time, the second from point-blank range.

It was a commendable performance by both sides: the Socceroos never surrendered the free-flowing verticalité which has served them so well in the Postecoglou Era, while the Snow Leopards were solid at the back, and all Australia will be cheering them on when they take on Jordan at home next week.

Australia 3 (Mile Jedinak 40’ pen.; Tim Cahill 50’; Ildar Amirov 69’ o.g.) – Kyrgyzstan 0

Cautions: Kairat Zhyrgalbek Uulu (Kyr.) 56’; Tim Cahill (Aust.) 90’

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Tajikistan v. Australia at Dushanbe

After the Socceroos’ opening World Cup qualifier in Kyrgyzstan, their next away assignment was an encounter with the equally post-Soviet republic of Tajikistan. The venue was the Pamir Stadium in Dushanbe, one of those stadia surrounded by an athletics track that one sees in those sorts of countries.

Tajikistan had been the scene of civil unrest in the lead-up to the match, and the pitch was surrounded by men in forest green military fatigues. With the home team anchored by a core of club-mates from Istiqlol Dushanbe, the Socceroos found it difficult to convert their high tally of early set pieces into goals. It was easy enough to dribble through the Tajik midfield, but the hosts’ sterling defence showed no sign of letting up.

Melbourne City’s Aaron Mooy was ubiquitous, constantly testing the Persian Lions’ defence with his set pieces, before a corner led to a goal-mouth scramble in the fifty-seventh minute, Mark Milligan slotting home the ball after it appeared to ricochet off the back of a Tajik defender. When in possession, шери порси were inventive, but could never quite put the visitors under enough pressure to threaten an upset, though los australianos had their own problems adjusting to the artificial turf – a far cry from the pock-marked pitch they endured in Bishkek.

His job done, Mooy was substituted off eleven minutes later, and shortly afterwards a Ryan McGowan cross found Tim Cahill, who put the ‘Roos 2-0 up. Tractor Boy Tommy Oar came on for Mathew Leckie, and soon made it three by crossing and thereby facilitating a Cahill header with seconds of normal time remaining.

Tajikistan 0 – Australia 3 (Mark Milligan 57’; Tim Cahill 73’, 90+1’)

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Australia v. Bangladesh at Perth

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.

Australia 5 (Mathew Leckie 6’; Tom Rogić 8’; Topu Barman [own goal] 20’; Nathan Burns 29’; Aaron Mooy 61’) – Bangladesh 0

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Kyrgyzstan v. Australia at Bishkek

Being a connoisseur of sport in the former Soviet Union, I was looking forward to seeing the Socceroos play at the Spartak Stadium in the city formerly known as Frunze.

An article in the antipodean edition of the Guardian gives a feel of the essential post-Sovietness of the ground: dilapidated seating, low-grade turf, and Cyrillic writing, the city’s residents housed in rows upon rows of khrushchyovka. It’s the sort of description calculated to repulse the (post-)modern globalised consumerist Westerner, but it serves as a reminder that there was once another world, born in revolt against capitalism and more real than our baudrillardien pottage of hypocrisy and hyperreality.

Both teams lined up in an alledged 4-3-3 on a pitch that looked not so much post-Soviet as post-grass. The tone for the match was set in the first minute, when the Socceroos attacked from the kick-off, Mathew Leckie drawing a foul. The subsequent free kick was belted in by Mile Jedinak, and the Asian champions had taken their first step down the road to Russia in 2018.

Before they could get settled in, however, the Snow Leopards came at them with all guns blazing. They had mounted two attacks on Mat Ryan’s goal by the seventh minute, the suspiciously European-sounding Edgar Bernhardt looking particularly dangerous. Indeed, the visitors’ next half-chance came in the seventeenth minute. At one end, Mirlan Murzaev hit the side netting; at the other, Nathan Burns had a penalty shout turned down. By the half-hour mark, eight shots had been taken, three-quarters of them by ак барстар.

Defender Daniel Tagoe was cautioned for his challenge on Leckie, but i gialloverdi could do little with the ensuing free kick-corner kick combo. The teams went into the sheds with a 1-0 scoreline showing on the electronic scoreboard in that 1980s alarm clock font, but the real stars of the show were the home side, determined to take the game to their illustrious opponents, and the turf, whose pot-holes and unpredictable bounce forced both sides to avoid the midfield passovotchka and engage in a relentless end-to-end shootout.

After the break, the men in red from the steppes showed that they had more tricks up their sleeve. Their tactic of javelin-throwing the ball into the box at throw-ins almost resulted in Murzaev doing a play-the-ball into the goal. Still threatening with three-quarters of the match played, Kyrgyzstan would finish ahead nine to two on corners and nineteen to eleven on shots. They had dictated the frenetic tempo of the match, and it would be their undoing as a steal by Mark Milligan in the Australian half was passed to a charging Tommy Oar on the left wing, who coolly slotted the ball past the keeper.

To the credit of the Central Asians, they persisted with their high-intensity game, their forcing of a pressured clearance from Ryan just two minutes later nearly resulting in a goal for Anton Zemlianukhin. They did get one back deep in injury time, when a corner kick came off the head of captain Azamat Baymatov and was fully over the line before appearing to touch the hand of substitute forward Almazbek Mirzaliev at the far post. The other interesting occurrence came in the seventy-ninth minute, when a piece of the advertising hoarding surrounding the pitch fell over of its own accord.

But these descriptions of who scored and in which minute don’t do justice to this match. This was the most frenzied ninety minutes I have ever seen: counter-attack upon counter-attack, long balls, verticality, hurried clearances, powerfully launched throw-ins, pressing and gegenpressing. It was as if a new game had been born, one devoid of the tedious passenacio which has come to define modern football. And it was all thanks to a team nicknamed, of all things, the Snow Leopards.

Kyrgyzstan 1 (Azamat Baymatov 92’) – Australia 2 (Mile Jedinak 2’; Tommy Oar 67’)

Cautions: Daniel Tagoe (Kyr.) 31’; Bakhtiyar Duyshobekov (Kyr.) 57’; Alex Wilkinson (Aust.) 83’

La Grande Milan

Since I first began studying soccer tactics (mainly through the writings of Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian and Michael Cox at Zonal Marking), I have noticed that the AC Milan side which won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990 has a certain cult status among connoisseurs of tactics. Being too young to have seen them in action at the time (although some of the players were still knocking about when SBS came to Albury in 1997), I decided to get on YouTube and find out just why this team are so revered.

I rossoneri were coached by Arrigo Sacchi, who later took Italy to the 1994 World Cup final. Sacchi’s preferred style consisted of a 4-4-2 with a flat midfield four, pressing, and an ideological preference for team structure over individual flair (in the mid-2000s, he lasted only twelve months as technical director at Real Madrid, disagreeing with the club’s fetish for signing celebrity players at the expense of cultivating young talent).

The quality of the cattle at Sacchi’s disposal is evident by looking at Milan’s line-ups for its two European Cup victories (a 4-0 win over Steaua Bucharest at the Nou Camp and a 1-0 victory over Benfica in Vienna). Full-back Paolo Maldini and centre-back (and captain) Franco Baresi feature in many modern ‘greatest ever’ XIs. Frank Rijkaard and Carlo Ancelotti commanded the centre of midfield. Marco van Basten played slightly ahead of compatriot Ruud Gullit up front. In those days before the Bosman ruling, the Dutch trio were the only non-Italians in the team.

The match which I will be focusing on is the second leg of their 1989 European Cup semi-final, a 5-0 win over Real Madrid at the San Siro which followed a 1-1 draw at the Bernabéu. So far in the then-knockout competition, Milan had beaten Levski Sofia comfortably, Red Star Belgrade on penalties, and Werder Bremen narrowly; their opponents had needed extra time to get past PSV Eindhoven, while Steaua Bucharest and Galatasaray were the other two semi-finalists. (English clubs were, at the time, banned from European competition due to that country’s hooligan problem; Sports Illustrated recently speculated that this milanista side would have beaten the great Liverpool team of that era.) The Madrid side boasted names like Emilio Butragueño, Bernd Schuster, and Hugo Sánchez; in the match, they wore an all-royal blue away kit with long sleeves and oh-so-eighties white chevrons down the seams.

After an opening eighteen minutes in which the best chances came from corners, Milan took the lead thanks to a wonder strike from Ancelotti. Full-back Mauro Tassotti’s throw-in found Gullit who proceeded to lose the ball, but the Madrid players were immediately surrounded by a phalanx of red-and-black-striped shirts and found themselves unable to cleanly take possession. The defenders pushed the ball back to the Dutchman who survived a strong challenge to find Ancelotti unmarked in midfield. The current Real Madrid manager dribbled around two opponents and fired a shot past the keeper from roughly thirty metres out.

Six minutes later, after the madrileño defence successfully forced the ball back to the halfway line after a corner, a lightning counter-attack won Milan a second. Winger Roberto Donadoni passed short to Tassotti, whose cross was (in the words of Dennis Cometti) centimetre-perfect and Rijkaard rose above his marker to head it into the auld onion bag. “Milan, splendido!” said the commentator, adding that it was a “stupendo secondo gol per il Milan.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Butragueño had a legitimate appeal for a penalty turned down after being brought down by goalkeeper Giovanni Galli while chasing a loose ball. Gullit then showed sublime ball control to send Sánchez the wrong way and execute an on-target shot from the same range as Ancelotti’s earlier goal. The oranje playmaker was everywhere, getting a header away to Donadoni’s post-corner cross, and then being brought down in the box by Ricardo Gallego after Rijkaard collected the ball from a goal kick and found him with a lovely through ball.

Milan would go to the break with a 3-0 lead (having made eight shots to three), courtesy of the man of the moment. Ancelotti was advancing forward and managed to offload the ball to Donadoni as he was tackled. Donadoni weighed up his options before combining with Gullit for a one-two past Manuel Sanchís. Now in the left-hand corner of the pitch, Donadoni again got the better of the hapless Sanchís, dribbling around him to put in a cross with his right foot. He had van Basten and Gullit in the box, and right-winger Angelo Colombo advancing unmarked toward the goal. But the number ten was in the best position, and he headed toward the far post, leaving marker Rafael Gordillo and keeper Paco Buyo wondering exactly what had just happened.

It wasn’t long before they had their fourth goal. The attack began in the centre circle, as Tassotti found Rijkaard in space due to a distinct lack of defensive pressure on the part of los merengues. Rijkaard then launched a high ball towards Gullit in the penalty area. He collected the pass with his head, and in doing so drew the two centre-backs towards himself, leaving van Basten with enough time to control the ball well before hitting the top left-hand corner of the net.

Gullit had earlier been seen in the technical area receiving treatment for an injury, and he was stretchered off before the hour mark and replaced by the grey-haired Pietro Paolo Virdis. It made little difference as Tassotti and Donadoni again combined to force an attack from a corner kick. On this occasion, Donadoni decided to blast the ball from the corner of the penalty area into through a crowd of players. The final half-hour was a quiet affair as the 5-0 scoreline meant that the Italians’ spot in the final was all but assured.

(As mentioned earlier, that final ended with them running out 4-0 winners against Gheorghe Hagi’s Steaua Bucharest.)

Sacchi’s Milan had it all: a solid back four who pressed together in a way that made them look like a rugby league team advancing on an opposing ball-carrier, wingers capable of using the space on the flanks to create chances, Ancelotti’s brilliance on the ball, and the Gullit-van Basten partnership up front. They were also known for their offside trap (a skill which has been made less useful by FIFA’s mid-2000s changes to the offside rule); in the first leg of the tie at the Bernabéu, the home side bothered the linesman twenty-seven times.

Since retiring from coaching, Sacchi has gone on record to assert that soccer has not evolved tactically since his great Milan side. On one level, this sounds silly – surely he must have noticed the tiki-taka of Barcelona, the gegenpressing of Bayern München and Borussia Dortmund, and the innovative methods of coaches like Marcelo Bielsa and Louis van Gaal.

But on another level, Sacchi may be right. His gameplan is spoken of as the philosophical successor to the totaalvoetbal of the Netherlands and Ajax in the 1970s; indeed, a few years ago, Sacchi ranked that cohort of players with his rossoneri and Pep Guardiola’s blaugrana as the three greatest he had ever seen.

The essence of totaalvoetbal was the subordination of the individual to the collective by the interchanging of player positions. In soccer, due to the restricted number of substitutions allowed per match (three in competitive matches today; two in the heyday of Cruijff and Co.), players cannot be easily replaced by another specialist in their position in the way that, say, AFL on-ballers or NFL running backs can be. Thus, players are forced to be versatile. With the globalisation of the sport (leading to the exaltation of individual talents like David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo) and larger squad sizes (meaning that players can easily be interchanged between matches even if they can’t be within them), it is easy to see that soccer is moving away from the ideal of ‘universality’ favoured by Sacchi towards a focus on the creativity and flair of the individual player.

This, then, was one of the greatest squads ever assembled. Like the Paris Commune and the Bavarian Soviet Republic, however, it didn’t last. The physical demands of Sacchi’s style, particularly the pressing, took their toll on the players. And, perhaps, with the rise of squad rotation, the idealisation of the great number nines and tens, and the division of labour between holding and attacking midfielders, we will never see another team quite like La Grande Milan.

A-League elimination final match review: Adelaide United v. Brisbane at Adelaide

The first match of this season’s A-League finals was a superb display of attacking association football by both sides, and one felt disappointed that only one of them could go on to fight another day.

The excitement began in the seventh minute, when Craig Goodwin curled in a spectacular free kick (at a distance later measured at 27.7 metres) to put the hosts 1-0 up. The same player nearly doubled the lead seven minutes later when Sergio Cirio put him through on goal. There followed more Adelaide chances, and just as many Brisbane counter-attacks, before Dylan McGowan failed to clear the ball from defence, allowing the on-rushing Thomas Broich to steal the ball and put himself one-on-one with the keeper.

Though their coach is Catalan, there was nothing tiki-taka about Adelaide’s play; their verticality and gegenpressing instead evoking antipodean echoes of Borussia Dortmund. Brisbane, too, defended solidly and then moved the ball forward with the minimum possible number of passes.

The second half opened at a slightly slower tempo, and la roja looked somewhat less dangerous at set pieces. Both clubs made substitutions; Adelaide traded Marcelo Carrusca for target man Awer Mabil, while the Roar brought on Costa Rican import Jean Carlos Solórzano. Matters then began to proceed at the ferocity of the first half: a seventy-third-minute through ball to Pablo Sánchez and a seventy-fifth-minute corner which caused a commotion in the box made Adelaide look the likelier side; this impression was furthered when Cirio settled and had his shot saved in the eightieth minute.

The men in orange, however, weren’t finished yet. Two minutes later, Solórzano set up Andrija Kaluđerović who crashed into Reds’ keeper Eugene Galekovic, followed closely by captain Matt McKay having a crack himself. But it was Adelaide’s off-the-ball work which won them the match. Miguel Palanca, earlier substituted on for countryman Sánchez, stole the ball from an oranje attacker in his own half with three minutes of regulation time left on the clock. He combined with Cirio to counter-attack forward, and it was his cut-back from the goal line which found Mabil. Former English youth international goleiro Jamie Young, who had been magnificent all night, was unlucky here in getting only his fingertips on the ball, and the Reds found themselves heading to the Sydney Football Stadium for a blockbuster preliminary final.

Adelaide United 2 (Goodwin 7’; Mabil 87’) – Brisbane 1 (Broich 27’)

A-League/AFL crossover guernseys

This is a little experiment in designing football guernseys, something which I have wanted to do for a long time but have only recently taught myself how to do properly. Armed with Microsoft Paint and some blank templates downloaded from the Bigfooty guernsey design board, I set about creating an Aussie rules guernsey for each of the ten A-League teams (based on the strips shown here). The rules I set for myself were that each guernsey must use the colours of the relevant A-League team (with one exception: see Melbourne City below), and the design must have been worn in the AFL, VFL, VFA, SANFL, WAFL, or interstate matches.

Asian Cup final match review: Australia v. South Korea at Sydney

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’

Man of the match: Trent Sainsbury (Aust.)

Asian Cup semi-final match review: Australia v. United Arab Emirates at Newcastle

The city which has some claim to having been the soccer capital of Australia in the era prior to the Ethnic Ascendancy of the late 1950s hosted the second semi-final of the 2015 Asian Cup on Tuesday night. The Novocastrians were treated to a largely unenthralling spectacle played in wet conditions, though one in which the host nation did what it needed to do to ensure a place in Saturday night’s final against South Korea.

The Socceroos’ opponents, thanks to a pair of upsets in the two Friday quarter-finals which also saw Iraq knock out Iran, were the seven Gulf emirates once known as the Trucial States. Like our earlier opponents Kuwait, the U. A. E. qualified for a World Cup once upon a time – namely Italia ’90. Since then, they’ve been too busy shopping and having their South Asian slaves construction workers build really tall buildings to win soccer matches.

The ‘Roos opened the scoring in the third minute, when Tim Cahill and Trent Sainsbury both jumped up to head a cross, the first-mentioned not connecting with the ball but the latter heading truly. Eleven minutes later, Cahill and Mathew Leckie each had a crack at converting a Robbie Kruse cross but were denied by the goalkeeper; it fell to the third man in, Jason Davidson, to do the honours. It felt then that it was all over bar the shooting, and the slow tempo of the remaining hour and a quarter ensured that there was never much chance of the scorers being troubled further.

The Emirates’ playmaker Omar Abdulrahman had been sledged as ‘lazy’ coming into the match, and seemed determined to prove his critics wrong. He got back in defence, and was instrumental in most of his team’s forward thrusts. Centre-forward Ahmed Khalil was also in the thick of it, going just wide and to the right with an outside-the-box strike in the fifty-first minute.

But overall, al-abyad didn’t look like a side which had just knocked out the continent’s flagship team. The Socceroos pressed mercilessly and were able to strip their opponents of possession in a comically easily fashion; the gulfsiders’ feeble attempts at counter-attacking were usually a case of one player (usually Omar Abdulrahman or Khalil) dribbling the ball upfield and having no-one to whom to pass. Postecoglou’s men continued their dominance of the possession statistics, going into the interval with fifty-eight percent of the ball, and having advanced inside their opponents’ penalty area nine times to the Arabs’ four.

Cahill decided to provide another highlight-reel moment when he used Ali Mabkhout as a springboard to head away an Emirati corner in the fortieth minute. He was substituted off in the sixty-seventh for Tomi Jurić. This blog thought that captain Mile Jedinak had done a Paul Gascoigne three minutes prior, ruling himself out of the final with a second caution, only to discover that the Asian Football Confederation expunges previous yellow cards before the semi-finals. The rest of the lads did more or less what was expected of them; Kruse, one of this blog’s favourite players, particularly distinguished himself, going on a nice little solo run across the ‘D’ in the fifty-sixth minute before shooting wide, and generally motoring along the wings providing lots of ball for the various options in the box.

The only other noteworthy event occurred in the seventy-fifth minute, when a Leckie shot was saved by Emirati ‘keeper and captain Majed Naser. The continent’s highest-profile referee, Uzbek Ravshan Irmatov, awarded a goal kick instead of a corner, to the astonishment of all present.

With the nouveaux riches from the Gulf dispatched, the Socceroos head to Homebush for a final against South Korea. This group of players are ninety minutes away from this nation’s finest ever soccer triumph. A triumph that owes everything to Novocastrian miners and steelworkers who founded great clubs like Adamstown and West Wallsend, and who kept the association game alive in its darkest hours.

FORZA AUSTRALIA!!!

Australia 2 (Trent Sainsbury 3’; Jason Davidson 14’) – United Arab Emirates 0

Cautions: Mathew Leckie (Aust.) 42’; Mile Jedinak (Aust.) 64’

Man of the match: Massimo Luongo (Aust.)

Asian Cup quarter-final match review: Australia v. China at Brisbane

Following their failure to seal the proverbial deal against South Korea on Saturday night, the Socceroos were banished to Lang Park, a venue on which the code has some history, to face the in-form Chinese in the second quarter-final of the 2015 Asian Cup.

The hosts were back to a variation of their default starting eleven, after the player rotations for which Ange Postecoglou was criticised by anyone and everyone with a platform on teh interwebz. The finalists of this tournament will play six matches in three weeks in the middle of the Australian summer, so rotation is essential. A semi-final against Japan is not an issue – we would most likely have had to beat them to win the Cup anyway, and it doesn’t matter whether we do it in the semi-finals or the final. The proof will be in the eating, and one suspects that Postecoglou knows a bit more about coaching than the randoms who troll his work on t’internet.

The first half was an intriguing but goalless affair in which both sides tried to scope each other out. Australia had a whopping seventy-seven percent of the possession, but most of their scoring opportunities came from set pieces: Mark Bresciano alone had two free kicks almost headed into the back of the net by Mile Jedinak and Trent Sainsbury. Mathew Leckie had a strike saved in the twenty-ninth minute and crossed to Tim Cahill’s head in the thirty-ninth. A few defensive errors were almost pounced upon by the visitors, although the lads had composed themselves by the half-hour mark.

In stark contrast to the first two group matches, in which the Socceroos faced capitalist petrotyrannies (Kuwait and Oman) who defended as a unit, the men from Red China were hyper-individualistic in their marking, winning one-on-one duels and meeting each Australian demand for a goal with a supply of a body to block it. Their centre-forward Wŭ Lĕi was entrepreneurial in front of goal. The East Was Red (actually they were in their predominantly white away strips) but the West seemed readier to score. But from where would the Socceroos get that elusive first goal?

That question was answered soon after the break. A Bresciano corner led to a duel in the box in which Cahill out-muscled his opponent Zhèng Zhì, and the ball spilled back to Ivan Franjic who headed back to the former Goodison Park man. What followed was a classic goal as Cahill avoided any worries about the uneven state of the pitch by executing a bicycle kick – yes, dear readers, a bicycle kick – on the corner of the six-yard box. Forty-six thousand in the stands and twenty-three million at home went absolutely mental.

Cue the now-familiar post-goal celebration, this time performed with such gusto that he knocked the corner flag out of its moorings. The game began to be played at a faster tempo, as both sides tried their luck from outside the area. I gialloverdi hit a purple patch during the few minutes on either side of the hour mark, in which, among other manoeuvres, Bresciano shot a loose ball over the bar and Cahill collected a header with his back to goal and turned to shoot only to be denied by goalkeeper Wáng Dàléi.

The home side’s efforts paid off in the sixty-fifth minute when Cahill, loitering in the vicinage of the penalty spot, headed a Jason Davidson cross into the turf and past Wáng. Two goals seemed enough in theory, but the ‘Roos had to hold off some ferocious Chinese attacking around the seventy-minute mark. The great man was substituted off to rapturous applause in the eightieth minute, and the remainder of the match was a frantic series of moves and counter-moves, with neither team able to alter the margin.

The final whistle sounded and a triumphant Postecoglou shook hands with his bench. The next stop on the Socceroos’ road to glory is that spiritual home of Australian soccer, Newcastle, for a Tuesday night semi-final against our primary nemesis for continental supremacy, Japan (provided, of course, that the Samurai Blue beat the Emirates in their quarter-final in Sydney tonight).

Australia 2 (Tim Cahill 49’, 65’) – China 0

Cautions: Mile Jedinak (Aust.) 20’; Zhāng Línpéng (China) 54’

Man of the match: Tim Cahill (Aust.)

Asian Cup Group A match review: Australia v. Oman at Sydney

The Socceroos last night continued their winning ways with a 4-0 defeat of Oman at the Cathy Freeman-Sam Burgess Memorial Stadium.

Oman obtained the first chance of the match, Raed Ibrahim Saleh’s shot on target saved in the third minute. The first quarter of the match proceeded with little incident, as the Socceroos played reactively, dominating possession while soaking up Omani pressure. The men in yellow had their first serious opportunities in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth minutes, when they pursued their usual strategy of KEEP CALM AND LOB IT TO TIM.

But Ange Postecoglou had more tricks up his sleeve than that, and in the twenty-seventh minute, the lads went 1-0 up courtesy of a corner kick. Trent Sainsbury headed it down for Matt McKay to tap in from close range. Before this turn of events could be digested, they added a second when a counter-attack landed the ball at the feet of the one and only Massimo Luongo (who, by the way, is in red hot form and ought to be playing somewhere much more prestigious than Swindon Town); lobbing over the Omani defence, he set up Robbie Kruse for a splendid finish.

The ‘Roos continued to probe the Omani defence for opportunities, clearly not satisfied with two goals. For the Red Warriors, it was, as the Mancunian television commentator put it, “‘ard graft”. The home side got the third in injury time after an unusual sequence of events. Kruse crossed to the Melbourne Victory’s Mark Milligan, in the side for the injured Mile Jedinak, who tapped the ball in. Kruse was ruled offside, but as Tim Cahill had been brought down by Ali Al-Busaidi while trying to get to said cross, Australia were awarded a penalty which Milligan duly converted.

The second half began with a long-range effort from Kruse which landed on the top of the net, but there was a sense that los verde y oro were taking the proverbial foot off the pedal in the fifty-first minute when Cahill and Luongo were substituted off, the Swindonian’s benching a good decision for reasons of conserving his energy and fitness, although he was on course for another man of the match performance. The men from the foot of the Arabian Peninsula seemed a mite more organised in defence, beginning as they were to resemble the six-man rhombus that Kuwait marshalled in the Aussies’ first match.

It was more of the same for the middle section of the second half. It would be Cahill’s replacement, Tomi Jurić, who would score the fourth, when Oman got fed up of watching the Socceroos pass the ball around among themselves and tried to win it away from the hosts. A quick forward movement and Mathew Leckie spied Jurić at the far post, and the Western Sydney Wanderer timed his slide perfectly. But Jurić had other chances: he failed to convert a counter-attacking long ball from McKay, he had a header batted away by Omani goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi, and he was one of a number of Socceroos crowded around the box who couldn’t quite figure out what to do with a sixty-ninth-minute corner.

The remainder of the match added little to the storyline, the only remarkable occurrences being the subbed-on Tommy Oar’s twisting strike in the penultimate minute of regulation time, which almost swerved underneath the bar, and Kruse’s pouncing on a loose ball in the box in the ninty-fifth minute, which would have been a goal had it not ricocheted off a sliding Omani defender.

This match felt like a turning point in the evolution of o seleção under Postecoglou. The lads controlled the flow of the game, but were content to play a patient brand of soccer in which they capitalised on the opposition’s mistakes (though one wonders, naturally, whether Worst Korea will make the same number of unforced errors). The most telling statistics were the number of shots from inside the penalty area (14-1 in favour of the home side at the eighty-minute mark) and the number of completed passes (700-308 in Australia’s favour). Perhaps the best move of the night was the two early crosses to Cahill – it was as if the lads were parodying the cahilldependencia of which they have been accused when they turned around and immediately started pursuing other avenues to goal.

All this sets up a mouth-watering clash with the team representing the capitalist, pro-American regime on the southern half of the Korean peninsula at Lang Park on Saturday night.

Australia 4 (Matt McKay 27’; Robbie Kruse 30’; Mark Milligan 45+2’ pen.; Tomi Jurić 70’) – Oman 0

Cautions: Ahmed Mubarak Al-Mahaijri (Oman) 36’; Abdul Al-Mukhaini (Oman) 45+1’; Matthew Špiranović (Aust.) 73’; Jason Davidson (Aust.) 87’

Man of the match: Robbie Kruse (Aust.)