Good morning Australia, from beautiful San Diego. This is going to be fun this morning, I hope. Tony Popovic has named a fun starting XI.
Only four players from the team that lined up against Mexico last week have retained their spots – the back three of Alessandro Circati, Harry Souttar and Lucas Herrington, and midfielder Aiden O’Neill. Everything else is different. Do the math; that means seven changes, including Cristian Volpato and Tete Yengi, the two uncapped players in the Socceroos’ World Cup squad who will be uncapped no more. The back-ups out wide also get some minutes in Kai Trewin and Aziz Behich, plus there’s Nestory Irankunda on the wing and Paul Okon-Engstler in midfield. And Patrick Beach in goal. That’s seven. Phew.
Fun fact: at an average age of 24.6, this is the youngest starting XI that Popovic has fielded as Socceroos coach. The previous record was 25.9 against Canada last year, so this is more than a full year younger. Wild.
It’ll be fascinating to see how that attack, in particular, functions, and whether the Socceroos will be on from the start. They weren’t at the Rose Bowl, but then again, there were 80,000 Mexican fans in the stands then, and there’s practically nobody here at Snapdragon Stadium. Not a huge surprise, given it’s a midday kick-off in a part of the world where I would imagine the Australian and Swiss diasporas are not huge.
Popovic told us yesterday that he wasn’t looking for any particular “answers” from this match, and that he was keen to get as many minutes into as many of them as possible – so expect the maximum 11 changes to be made. Apparently there’s no VAR today, what a small blessing.
