Okay. So Australia is still most likely going to be unceremoniously dumped off in the group stages but this has been truly remarkable.
This sums it up well imo.
I think I have lost faith in the Australians now, guess I might lean my support towards the Netherlands from here on following their amazing thrashing of Spain. Australia's performance in the loss to Chile was so abysmal.
C'mon, Hikamaru, we were not bad, let alone abysmal. Outclassed, yes, but we were up against Chile. Reading back it seems you thought they were out best chance for points, but I have to disagree, their form prior to the match was great and really, every single team in this group are expected to beat us and beat us comfortably. Even our 2006 squad - the golden generation - would have struggled to get a point from this group.
Consider then a spat of injuries (Kruse, Rogic, Kennady), retirements, and a rather new coach (because ours was truly poor, kinda lucky we qualified tbh with him!) and a very young team... to not be embarrassed is really a good result for us, realistically speaking.
While the end scoreline suggests that it was a comfortable win, it was a much closer match and we gave them a run for their money. Their third goal at the end was rather like Brazil's against Croatia - a late finisher helped by us pushing forward trying to find the equaliser, that's always a risk
Poor start with the defense - personally not much we could do with the first, the second though our defense was shellshocked and both of our CBs went to their left leaving that player open. After that they did a better job - excellent scrambling by Wilkinson with that goalline clearance. We put pressure on them, had some nice crosses, and Cahill did what he does best. Our CDMs did decently as well. Oar was kinda disappointing for me, and Leckie was hot and cold. Pity about Franjic, I doubt he'll play in the next game and we only have the one other true RB player now.
Anyways, I expected a loss, and disappointed we did, and the first part of the game was bad. But we got back into it, and I'd say we can hold our head high with how we played overall. Onto the next match, and more so the future of the team, it looks better than it did a year ago.