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Socceroos vs Egypt - 2026 World Cup R32 - Sat 4th of July 4am AEST

Villa Dan said:
Have we got a technical director we're Poppa and Co answer to when questions asked ?
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We don't have a technical director at Football Australia so in the absence of one Heather Garriock is meant to be holding Tony Popovic and the rest of the Socceroos coaching staff to account as part of her role as executive director of football.
 
rebelliousfeminist974 said:
We don't have a technical director at Football Australia so in the absence of one Heather Garriock is meant to be holding Tony Popovic and the rest of the Socceroos coaching staff to account as part of her role as executive director of football.
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Bring in Arsène Wenger in his official capacity as FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development to bypass domestic politics and fix the system.

Wenger’s actual mandate at FIFA is to audit national high-performance ecosystems and improve global coaching standards, Football Australia calling him in as an emergency consultant is the right move.

Tony Popovic is under heavy fire following the Round of 32 World Cup exit, and the AFC Asian Cup fast approaching in January 2027, so a replacement is very unlikely until after the Asian Cup. But Football Australia needs to be ready to move immediately after - first for the Technical Director.

This is likely to be a master development mind — someone who has overseen elite academies in Europe or Japan (where Wenger coached and heavily influenced their modern system). Can we afford it? Can we afford not to?

Without wanting to put words into Arsene's advice the manger it is likely this is the profile he would recommend for the Manager

  1. Proactive Tactical Identity: A manager committed to high-tempo, possession-based, attacking football. He would veto defensive, reactive managers who rely on low-blocks and long balls.
  2. Track Record with Youth: Because Australia needs to transition to a new generation, the manager must have a proven history of blooding teenagers and trust them on the big stage, mirroring Wenger's famous Arsenal philosophies.
  3. International Tournament Pedigree: Someone holding a UEFA Pro Licence (ideally) or AFC Pro Licence with prior experience navigating the high-pressure environments of continental or World Cup tournaments.
Can we afford it? Can we afford not to?
 
JM47 said:
For me the biggest blunderclass and the one I think that had the biggest impact in not defeating Egypt and potentially even putting more scoreboard pressure on the US, was how we used Irankunda.

The penalties and Leckie use etc. whilst questionable, I think are far outweighed by Popa's refusal to play Irankunda in his most useful position. It just boggles my mind that after that Turkiye performance, we did not for one minute see Irankunda in his preferred position. He is our X-factor and he is more or less ineffectual in the 9 role. It just really disappoints and should haunt Australian football that we did not see our most feared player in his most damaging position. For me, that is the one that Popa needs to really look at. Whilst it may be because Toure struggled physically, it'd have been far better to play Yengi there with Irankunda in behind.

It genuinely feels like a what could have been, had we had Irankunda there and then one of Volpato and Metcalfe coming off the bench. I think the scoreline is different.
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Not the sole reason but I can only surmise that Popa had a problem with Irankunda's positioning at LW in his meticulous low block..... He hinted something along those lines about him having to learn in the Turkiye post win interview.
This fact played a part in Popa's disaster-class of decisions from that moment on.
 
Pub League Champion said:
And we never even looked liked scoring from it. This needs to be looked at as much as the penalty choices. I’d like to know who made the decision to take corners like this. Poppa as Head Coach? Did someone take on the set piece duties? Given our height, the number of wasted corners was a disaster.
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When Mo Salah did his cornor i can see his delivery was dangerous i wish anyone of us in this team can do a cornor like him. If we did im sure we d have scored some.
 
Pub League Champion said:
Don’t know what all the Norwich fuss was about. He was anonymous all WC. However the good thing about having him on the pitch is that he enables Irankunda to move to the sideline. I’d like to see how Archie Goodwin goes in the MLS and if he starts regularly, he should be in the squad.
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Yep. No way he will be involved in our next world cup finals.

Eli Adams, Botic and Goodwin will be primed in 2030.
 
Everyone going on about Ryan being a failure for not stopping a penalty are probably the same people who praised Arnold/Redmaynd for the Peru shootout success. The facts are that Ryan faced 4 pens and didn’t save any - not an unusual statistic in shootouts. Redmayne faced 6 and saved 1 - the 6th one (an earlier one hit the post).
Ryan replacing Beach was not the decisive factor, missing two penalties was the issue during the shootout, but penalty misses happen and I am not at all criticising Souttar or Herrington for their misses.
The real decisive factor of the whole game was our (Popovic’s) tactics during the 120 minutes.
 
Keeper66 said:
Everyone going on about Ryan being a failure for not stopping a penalty are probably the same people who praised Arnold/Redmaynd for the Peru shootout success. The facts are that Ryan faced 4 pens and didn’t save any - not an unusual statistic in shootouts. Redmayne faced 6 and saved 1 - the 6th one (an earlier one hit the post).
Ryan replacing Beach was not the decisive factor, missing two penalties was the issue during the shootout, but penalty misses happen and I am not at all criticising Souttar or Herrington for their misses.
The real decisive factor of the whole game was our (Popovic’s) tactics during the 120 minutes.
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While I think it tempted fate, anything could have happened. I totally forgot Ryan saved a penalty Saudi away last year.

Here are some stats excluding shootouts where Ryan saved some for Alkmaar and against Uzbekistan. Here's the ratio of saved vs unsaved and percentage.


Ryan: 12 saved, 57 unsaved = 69 faced (17.4%)

Schwarzer: 9 saved, 63 unsaved = 72 faced (12.5%)

Langerak: 5 saved, 36 unsaved = 41 faced (12.2%)

Neuer: 17 saved, 65 unsaved = 82 faced (20.7%)

Buffon: 30 saved, 87 unsaved = 117 faced (25.6%)

K. Schmeichel: 26 saved, 99 unsaved = 125 faced (20.8%)

Zieler: 6 saved, 47 unsaved = 53 faced (11.3%)

Enke: 13 saved, 26 unsaved = 39 faced (33.3%)
​
 
So frame it that Neuer conceded 4 out of 5 penalties. Doesn't sound very good does it? Robert Enke really was a penalty killer at only 186cm.
 
People need to remember that Redmayne has only saved about 4 penalties in his life . The Peru game was a bluff and Arnold and Crawley knew they would have nothing on Redmayne.

By taking off Ryan they were bluffing that Peru would think how good must this be.
 
NicCarBel said:
Yeah - The one thing coming out of the media that I don’t agree with the shitting on is the generic “why are defenders taking penalties in a shootout?” angle. I know the two recent ones we won (2019 Asian cup, and 2022 qualifiers) was very much strikers taking the penalties, but the Uruguay shootout in 2005 we had Vidmar and Neill taking probably the two best of the shootout
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Craig Moore taking the pen against Croatia in 2006 too.
 
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