World Cup: Socceroos grow tired of the constant disrespect

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There’s dark horses, and then there’s dead horses. And Australia’s Group D opponents keep flogging the latter.

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The Socceroos are ranked 27th in the world and will be competing in their sixth straight World Cup, starting Saturday night at B.C. Place. But to hear their foes describe them, you’d think they were ranked somewhere south of Papua New Guinea.

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American pundits and players dismissed them as a “lay-up” and called the Group D draw a “dream scenario” heading into the tournament. Then Turkey entered the chat Friday, with captain Hakan Çalhanoğlu all but dismissing the Socceroos’ chances in the opener on Saturday night (9 p.m. PT).

“Our coach analyzed them with us together,” he said to media before Turkey’s training session at Killarney Park on Friday.

“We know that they’re a physical team, that they’re good on corner kicks and the free kicks, because they are tall and strong. But I think that we dominate tomorrow … because we have more qualities and a more talented team.”

The comments clearly rankled the Australians, but they had, as mentioned, heard it all before.

“Every nation that will play the three group games, I’m sure that all the media in here will tell us the same thing,” Australia Coach Tony Popovic said. “USA thinks that they should beat us. Paraguay thinks they should beat us. Turkey thinks they should beat us.

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“That’s no different for us. All we can do is do our own part, work the way we work, prepare how we can to our best, and without words, with action, we can show that we deserve to be hereand then we have every right to believe we can get through the group.

“You ask a question and (Çalhanoğlu) has a right to answer it any way he likes. They expect to win, but so do most people, they expect Turkey to beat Australia tomorrow.

“What we can do is try and spoil the party. That’s our challenge tomorrow, and that’s what we aim to do.”

Turkey is ranked 23rd, just a few spots above the Australians. Paraguay, which lost 4-1 to the 17th ranked Americans on Friday night, are 42nd in the world.

Socceroos midfielder Aiden O’Neill had little to add when asked about his counterpart’s comments, instead choosing to say how “excited” he was. Then saying it again.

“You know, (Çalhanoğlu) is allowed his own opinion. We’ve got quality players in our team too, so you know we’re ready for tomorrow, and like I said before, we’re extremely excited,” he said. “Yeah, we’re definitely ready for it. You know, I think they’ve got some top players, and so do we, so we’re just excited to get out there.”

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The Australian team had a walkthrough of B.C. Place for the first time on Friday afternoon, with O’Neill calling it “quality.”

But what really impressed him was the amount of yellow jerseys he saw in Vancouver on the drive into the stadium. It was, yes, “exciting.”

More than 10,000 traveling fans are expected to be at Saturday’s game — exceeding the 6,000 who went to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup — and Vancouver is home to a sizeable population of Aussie expats as well, so the team is expecting a pro-Australia crowd on Saturday night.

“The Australian public get behind the Socceroos, as they always do,” said Popovic. “We know that we’ll have fantastic support here. We’ve seen … so many Australian fans walking the streets here in Vancouver, which is wonderful to see.

Back home, we know in every state every Australian will be watching the Socceroos, and … and we want to do them proud. I hope they’ll be proud when after the game’s finished, and those 90 minutes are over, and they’ll see an Australian team that has once again shown what they can do in football on the world stage.”

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