CALIFORNIA — Efforts to boost soccer in the United States rest heavily on the national team’s success at the World Cup – but their Group D opponents, Australia, have every intention of crashing the co-hosts’ party.
“It’s our role to spoil one part of it,” Socceroos midfielder Aiden O’Neill told AFP.
“Obviously, I think it’s amazing that the World Cup is in the US, it’s growing. I can see that first hand, and I’m involved in that,” said O’Neill, who plays for Major League Soccer club New York City FC.
“I think it’s really exciting… We’ll come first and they can come second!” he joked.
The group also contains Turkey and Paraguay, and is arguably the tournament’s most evenly matched.
The United States is favourites to progress, while Australia – traditionally stronger at several other sports, despite consistently qualifying for the World Cup – have mostly flown under the radar.
O’Neill said the signature steeliness that runs throughout Australian sports could give his side the edge in reaching the knockout rounds against talented opposition.
“I think you can see we will give absolutely everything to get that result, and I think that could be the difference,” he said.
“There’s this fight and grit. It’s something that we have great pride in, having that grit and that determination.”
His team exhibited plenty of defensive solidity and sacrifice in their narrow 1-0 loss to Mexico. Despite conceding an early goal, Australia had the best of the chances.
The game took place 150 miles from the Mexico border at the Rose Bowl outside Los Angeles, where the vast majority of the near-80 000 crowd supported El Tri.
“We’re obviously going to face that type of atmosphere in the second game against the States, home-crowd advantage,” said defender Harry Souttar, whose side play the United States in Seattle on June 19.
“I love it. I’ll be excited by it,” said goalkeeper Mathew Ryan.
“Perhaps it’s very easy for people to think that you go out there feeling nervous in all that, but I think you’ve got to try and flip that and turn it into excitement,” Australia’s captain told AFP.
The experienced keeper, who had a successful stint at Brighton and Hove Albion as well as a brief loan at Arsenal, said at this stage in his career, a hostile home crowd was just “white noise.”
The pro-Mexico crowd in California was enraged by an apparent second goal for their team being disallowed after the referee ruled a free kick had been taken too quickly.
But Australia had the better of the second half, and coach Tony Popovic said his side’s performance after the break “will give us a lot of confidence that we can play a very good nation, fantastic team, well coached, big crowd.”
Could that backs-to-the-wall experience give Australia the edge in Seattle against the hosts?
“I’m not sure if they’ll be as loud as these guys, but we’ll wait and see,” said O’Neill.
