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Socceroos vs USA 2026 World Cup match thread 🇦🇺 🇺🇸

grazorblade said:
Part of it is who is playing. Only 3 players score from corners regularly in the entire squad, souttar herrington and irvine. With just souttar on the pitch, its obvious the ball is going to him so i guess they float it to him looking for a second ball?
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You don’t necessarily need excessively tall players to score from corners. What you do need is good delivery, good runs, and a desire to beat the defenders to the ball. The high floated crosses that we are persisting with is not good delivery in international football these days.
 
Irankunda went right down the tunnel at full time. The subs played like they were in protest of the first hour. It gives me a glimmer of hope.
 
Watched the replay in parts, first half McKennie and Tillman were allowed to do as they pleased...... Dropping into half spaces and running in behind out wide untracked as soon as Dest or Robinson pulled Bos or Italiano out of position. Balogun also dropped into half spaces and became the third runner out wide whenever the opportunity arose. The wingbacks stayed forward to press and effectively kept Bos and to a lesser extent Italiano out of the game.
In saying all that the US only looked moderately dangerous from crosses into central areas, I believe both Paraguay and ourselves have made them look good. Thought Okon had a good game in stifling attacks down his side during the onslaught to a lesser extent.
Second half we pressed and actually tracked the runners, Irankunda's pace worried them and McKennie and Tillman took their foot off the pedal.
 
DandyCasey said:
Watched the replay in parts, first half McKennie and Tillman were allowed to do as they pleased...... Dropping into half spaces and running in behind out wide untracked as soon as Dest or Robinson pulled Bos or Italiano out of position. Balogun also dropped into half spaces and became the third runner out wide whenever the opportunity arose. The wingbacks stayed forward to press and effectively kept Bos and to a lesser extent Italiano out of the game.
In saying all that the US only looked moderately dangerous from crosses into central areas, I believe both Paraguay and ourselves have made them look good. Thought Okon had a good game in stifling attacks down his side during the onslaught to a lesser extent.
Second half we pressed and actually tracked the runners, Irankunda's pace worried them and McKennie and Tillman took their foot off the pedal.
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Agree that Tillman and McKennie bossed the midfield.Because Leckie and Nishan could not do their pressing duties properly our wingbacks were under pressure and O'Neill and Okon were also pulled wide and thus not screening the CBs.
 
booney52 said:
Agree that Tillman and McKennie bossed the midfield.Because Leckie and Nishan could not do their pressing duties properly our wingbacks were under pressure and O'Neill and Okon were also pulled wide and thus not screening the CBs.
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Neither our centre mids or wingers tracked McKennie in particular.
 
In the post match press conference, Popovic raised a few eyebrows saying the players struggled to physically back up from the game against Turkey. The physical data is out and to my surprise it does support Poppas assessment. In particular, our top speeds dropped dramatically for all but two of the 8 outfield players that featured in both starting elevens,

PlayerTop Speed
Bos32.4km/h 🔻2.3km/h
Burgess27.5km/h 🔻6.8km/h
Souttar29.6km/h 🔻 5.1km/h
Circati32.4km/h View attachment 78954.2km/h
Italiano32.2km/h 🔻3.2km/h
Okon33.5km/h View attachment 78953.3km/h
O'Niell28.4km/h 🔻4.9km/h
Toure31.0km/h 🔻3.7km/h

Usa unsurprisingly had the fastest player out there with Balogun hitting a top speed of 35.6km/h, by contrast, Vellupilay's top speed was a mere 29.9km/h making him easily the slowest forward out there, leckie hit a slightly more sprightly 31.8km/h but that was still too slow against a lightening quick USA team. We actually covered a decent amount of distance, but our physical intensity dropped alarmingly in that game. So much of Australia's coaching revolution emphasizes the technical side of the game, so it is natural to look at the lack of possession, territory and the technical qualities of players on the pitch compared to those left on the bench - most notably Volpato who immediately stands out as one of our most technical players. However, as I have said many times, as long as Poppa has the reigns, he may as well coach with the methods he believes in and Poppa ball puts a huge emphasis on physical conditioning.

So it looks like Poppa is right that the players struggled to physically back up to a level he would like. However, this seems to raise even more questions. Didn't we have an extended camp to allow us to get used to Poppa's intensity levels as well as American conditions? Don't many of our outfielders play games with a much shorter turnaround time than the gap between our first two group stage matches? Cameron Burgess has the largest drop. I mentioned on the pod that I was already concerned he lagged in agility and speed compared to Geria and Herrington which might make him a tactical mismatch agains the quick and nimble American frontline. But why did he drop more than any other player when he is used to a 3 day turnaround in the grueling 46 game championship? How did we get the physical recovery so poor?

Apparently we travelled from the Turkey day back to base camp at 4am in the morning, then took the following day off implying there were two days without training used up in the 6 days. I'm not saying this vindicates his starting xi mind you but it is interesting....
 
grazorblade said:
In the post match press conference, Popovic raised a few eyebrows saying the players struggled to physically back up from the game against Turkey. The physical data is out and to my surprise it does support Poppas assessment. In particular, our top speeds dropped dramatically for all but two of the 8 outfield players that featured in both starting elevens,

PlayerTop Speed
Bos32.4km/h 🔻2.3km/h
Burgess27.5km/h 🔻6.8km/h
Souttar29.6km/h 🔻 5.1km/h
Circati32.4km/h View attachment 78954.2km/h
Italiano32.2km/h 🔻3.2km/h
Okon33.5km/h View attachment 78953.3km/h
O'Niell28.4km/h 🔻4.9km/h
Toure31.0km/h 🔻3.7km/h

Usa unsurprisingly had the fastest player out there with Balogun hitting a top speed of 35.6km/h, by contrast, Vellupilay's top speed was a mere 29.9km/h making him easily the slowest forward out there, leckie hit a slightly more sprightly 31.8km/h but that was still too slow against a lightening quick USA team. We actually covered a decent amount of distance, but our physical intensity dropped alarmingly in that game. So much of Australia's coaching revolution emphasizes the technical side of the game, so it is natural to look at the lack of possession, territory and the technical qualities of players on the pitch compared to those left on the bench - most notably Volpato who immediately stands out as one of our most technical players. However, as I have said many times, as long as Poppa has the reigns, he may as well coach with the methods he believes in and Poppa ball puts a huge emphasis on physical conditioning.

So it looks like Poppa is right that the players struggled to physically back up to a level he would like. However, this seems to raise even more questions. Didn't we have an extended camp to allow us to get used to Poppa's intensity levels as well as American conditions? Don't many of our outfielders play games with a much shorter turnaround time than the gap between our first two group stage matches? Cameron Burgess has the largest drop. I mentioned on the pod that I was already concerned he lagged in agility and speed compared to Geria and Herrington which might make him a tactical mismatch agains the quick and nimble American frontline. But why did he drop more than any other player when he is used to a 3 day turnaround in the grueling 46 game championship? How did we get the physical recovery so poor?

Apparently we travelled from the Turkey day back to base camp at 4am in the morning, then took the following day off implying there were two days without training used up in the 6 days. I'm not saying this vindicates his starting xi mind you but it is interesting....
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Fascinating. Thanks, Grazor. BTW, the attachment isn't working. Yeah, I also expected the extended camp to give us a physical edge. Not so, it seems. MV fans say Velupillay had a poor season after returning from injury. Was it down to his physical output (acceleration, agility, pace etc) not returning to pre- injury levels? Perhaps Velupillay was affected by nerves in his first WC match. I'm not really surprised about Burgess. He's not the most agile and mobile at the best of times and combine that with a very long season and no surprises. It's one reason why I preferred Rrowles over Degenek with Rowles and Herrington providing LCB options and Souttar and Burgess CB options. Not usually as exposed for pace in the CB role with the keeper behind as in the wider CB positions. As for the others, at this stage I can only guess that the lack of possession has had a big impact on physical output and subsequent recovery.
 
Keeper66 said:
You don’t necessarily need excessively tall players to score from corners. What you do need is good delivery, good runs, and a desire to beat the defenders to the ball. The high floated crosses that we are persisting with is not good delivery in international football these days.
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Agreed. And sometimes having more tall timber in the box draws best defenders to main threats and provides better chances to others that are used to being more heavily marked. But the delivery generally hasn't been good enough. This is not a new problem.
 
So, when I'm parking the bus my speed sure isn't a good avg top speed - obviously gonna be lower.......
Don't need stats analysis to confirm when your chasing the ball all game player fatigue.
Popa can't expect every player to have a large tank of gas when your chasing shadows 90mins.
Worse when you not known as a speedster in the first place - your then targeted for them's the gaps more exposed.
 
grazorblade said:
The comparison is with the turkey game where we played a very similar strategy and clocked higher speeds
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LFC - as I read it they aren't talking average top speed - just our top speeds being lower.

You'd think parking the bus and hitting on the counter you would have good top speeds since everything hinges on you breaking fast or you really are just parking the bus and hoping.
 
RIMB said:
LFC - as I read it they aren't talking average top speed - just our top speeds being lower.

You'd think parking the bus and hitting on the counter you would have good top speeds since everything hinges on you breaking fast or you really are just parking the bus and hoping.
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Also sprinting back from the midblock to the deepblock which we did quicker in the first game (hence the cbs registering higher tops speeds. Geria hit a high top speed as well against usa)
 
Just to put those numbers into something concrete,

We often sprint from our midblock to the deepblock around 10-20m a dozen times a half. Those drops in speeds means our players are 1-2m behind where they would be if they had the same speeds they registered against turkey. There were so many instances where the american was a yard or two ahead of our player

Also goes without saying you cant counter attack effevtively if your forwards are not much faster than the opponents cbs
 
The 11 for Paraguay would've been very interesting against the USA. More so the effort we went to to feed our wingers and keep the opponent moving.

The USA would've pressed more but I think we would've also found some spaces.
 
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