The jump of the ‘Kangaroos’ in Qatar: total respect for the combative and orderly team of Australia

It is time to show respect and give all the honors to the combative selection of Australia. No bias, no hard feelings. Six months ago, she removed us from the World Cup 2022 an orderly and applied team in its simple script. The ‘Kanguros’ (or ‘socceroos’) made the football leap that many of us didn’t recognize in time.

The World Cup Qatar 2022 He has given us a lesson in modern football: to determine the favoritism of a team, it is not enough to count the prices on Transfermarkt. If it were only for that variable, Belgium would already be in the semifinals of the tournament. If we were only looking at the great cracks, no one would have predicted Senegal’s qualification to the round of 16 with the loss of its indisputable figure Saido Mané.

Today, teams like Japan, Saudi Arabia or Australia (how curious that we have to mention three teams from the Asian confederation) can close the gap with tactical proposals that are as realistic as they are effective. Precisely, these three elevens coincide in a permanent praise of pressure football, to reduce the spaces for rival talent. We have seen the results in these first 50 World Cup matches.

For this reason, we were very wrong six months ago when we said that Australia was far from that 2006 World Cup team that brought together top names in the Premier League such as Viduka, Cahill or Kewell (and that beat Uruguay from Recoba, Lugano and Paolo Montero). This team only had one footballer in the last group stage of Champions League (Celtic’s Mooy midfielder), however he has repeated his game idea for a long time. That very resistant brand block was suffered by Peru, Denmark and at times Argentina yesterday.

Its coach Graham Arnold is quite serious even for the peculiar: how to change goalkeeper before a penalty shootout and ask to collect the piece of paper with the instructions of the Danish coach. Australia has played its fifth consecutive World Cup, has grown since it moved from the Oceanian confederation to the Asian confederation and has sealed its second qualification to the round of 16 in its history. He is being respected, with few reproaches and much applause.

With an average age of 26, he can calmly watch the next Asian qualification (with 48 teams in the 2026 World Cup, his pass will be almost a formality). It is healing to make the corridor to the winning rival on June 13 in Doha. It doesn’t matter if six months have passed, it’s never too late even if it still hurts. Australia was never a team that was passing through. Neither in the playoffs six months ago nor in Qatar 2022. We have to tattoo it in our minds. Who knows if we will meet again very soon.

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