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World Cup 2026 Australia thread

Mr Cleansheets said:
So glad I'm not going.

A few years back I had every intention but jeez... Trump and Infantino have corporatised, commodified and utterly ruined the best party in the world.
Click to expand...
I was so excited. I had plans to go. But the ticket prices were ridiculous, young kids at home so decided to stay put.

I've got my eyes on Spain, Portugal, Morocco if we're lucky enough to qualify.
 
football360.com.au

'Bravo, Cristian!': My first impressions of Socceroos' World Cup HQ as I watched training

You’ve got to hand it to Football Australia on this one: The Socceroos’ World Cup training base in Oakland is decked out brilliantly in green and gold. Upon arrival, the first thing you see is a flag flying high. Inside, there are a range of decals with inspiring slogans. Among them: “27 million...
football360.com.au football360.com.au

Some interesting snippets from the article

I could not discern if there was any real logic to who was on which team, but at one point assistant coach Paul Okon intervened to make a pair of positional changes: Mat Leckie into a midfield role alongside Jackson Irvine and Cristian Volpato into the No. 9 role. Read into that however much you want.

.......

At one point in the session, Mile Jedinak had a long chat to Cammy Devlin. Based on his gestures, the pair appeared to be discussing body positioning in midfield. It’s moments like this that make you realise how important having someone like Jedinak, who has been there and done that at World Cups, is for this Socceroos setup.

.......

The session ended with a penalty shootout, culminating in Izzo denying Ajdin Hrustic – much to the enjoyment of Irankunda, who celebrated happily with the Randers custodian.

........

we watched Irankunda, Volpato and Awer Mabil practicing free-kicks. Could one of them get the chance with a dead ball in a World Cup match?
 
Of course they are friendlies, and key players were rested, and there were a lot of subs, but this applied to both favourites and underdogs. So good to see some encouraging recent results for the non-European or South American teams e.g.:
France 1 Ivory Coast 2 (played in France);
Spain 1 Iraq 1 (played in Spain, go Arnie!)
Netherlands 0 Algeria 1 (played in Holland)
Hopefully this augurs well for a World Cup of upsets, which would be sweet, specially if it's us doing the upsetting:)

Have been looking at inter-confederation results from Qatar 2022. Doesn't bode well for Ausralia, given that we've got 1 CONMEBOL, 1 CONCACAF and 1 UEFA team in Group D. Surprisingly AFC's best pertfomances were against UEFA

Full results from Qatar 2022 inter-confederation match ups:
UEFA v CONMEBOL: W1 D1 L4 GF 9 GA 15 GD -6
UEFA v CAF W6 D4 L3 GF 14 GA 8 GD +6
UEFA v AFC W4 D1 L5 GF 18 GA 13 GD +5
UEFA v CONCACAF W5 D3 L0 GF 20 GA 5 GD +15
CONMEBOL v CAF W1 D0 L2 GF 3 GA 3 GD 0
CONMEBOL v AFC W3 D1 L1 GF 9 GA 4 GD +5
CONMEBOL v CONCACAF W1 D0 L0 GF 2 GA 0 GD +2
CAF v AFC W2 D0 L1 GF 6 GA 4 GD +2
CAF v CONCACAF W1 D0 L0 GF 2 GA 1 GD +1
AFC v CONCACAF W0 D0 L3 GF 1 GA 4 GD -3

So on a hypothetical round robin table we'd have:
1. CONMEBOL W3 D0 L1 GD +13
2. CAF W3 D0 L1 GD -3
3. UEFA W2 D0 L2 GD +20
4. CONCACAF W1 D0 L3 GD -15 (ahead of AFC on head to head)
5. AFC W1 D0 L3 GD -15

Would love to see big improvement in AFC and CAF results, though you'd expect a good showing from the home confederation, CONCACAF.
 
NicCarBel

Post in thread 'SIMULATIONS - 2026 FIFA World Cup'

It's Australia's final group game - and it's do or die for both sides, as Australia faces off with Paraguay in San Francisco





Whilst the Socceroos don't know this at the time of kick-off, Turkiye's victory over USA has confirmed them as Group D winners. For Australia to guarantee advancing to the Round of 32, they must defeat Paraguay - who also needs to win to have a sniff of advancing as third place.

For the Socceroos, a victory will guarantee them second (although being played at the same time as the match above, means they could have theoretically...
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