Jordan Bos smiles, wide like his position, at a world that appears to come easily. The Socceroos’ left full-back is sitting behind the microphones inside an auditorium within a sprawling training facility in Oakland. Its walls are still adorned by images of the Raiders, the NFL team who left for Las Vegas six years ago – before Bos had even played his first professional match.
The Australian’s career has moved swiftly towards this moment: a World Cup debut for the Socceroos’ not-so-secret weapon. “I just have to soak up the experience and just play football,” Bos says. “It’s kind of hard to ‘feel’ the moment as it is now, but I think afterwards I’ll really understand the experience that I’m in now.”
The World Cup’s first match is a day away. The Socceroos’ showdown with tournament dark horses Turkey barely three. The travelling Australian media cohort has swelled to about 30. They hang on every word of the 23-year-old, heralded as the side’s breakout star. Is there pressure? “Not really pressure,” Bos says. “I don’t really look at that stuff. Or think about it too much.”
The son of Dutch backpacker Jacco who met mother Sandra while travelling in Australia, Bos grew up in Point Cook in the western suburbs of Melbourne. “I’m more of a guy that just plays and gets on with it,” he says.
His junior club, Hoppers Crossing, is best known as the place where Mad Max was filmed. That movie’s protagonist Max Rockatansky is fuelled by vengeance in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Bos appears less complicated. “Whatever everyone’s saying, it’s nice to hear,” he says. “But, you know, I don’t put any pressure on myself.”
Bos’ laid back approach – combined with searing pace, adept delivery and robust physicality – has taken him all the way to Dutch giants Feyenoord. In the Eredivisie, the Netherlands’ top division, he immediately excelled last year and was named player of the month for September. With four goals and six assists over the season, he helped the Rotterdam club to second place and a spot in the Champions League. The New York Times this week named Bos one of the stars of the World Cup.
While Bos might downplay it, he admits the praise is appreciated. “To have some positivity and having people believing in me and stuff like that, it’s really nice, and yeah, it does feel like [the work] is paying off a bit,” he says. “But yeah, we go on.”
In nine minutes with the media, Bos responds as quickly as he runs. Many of the questions are longer than his replies, which are filled with casual generalities: he uses the word “nice” nine times.
When asked to describe what he’s like off the pitch, he pauses, the smile somehow getting wider. “I think I’m a pretty chill guy,” he says. “I don’t do a lot in my day. I like to stay home and play video games, and stuff like that.”
Asked to run through them, he lists the first person shooter Rainbow Six Siege. He names Ash as his favourite character, one – according to the game’s online wiki – who “can be aggressive, impulsive, and overly confident”. Bos’ marauding runs down the left leave a similar impression. But he rejects the notion he is a one-way player. “I do like attacking but I don’t think my defensive side has ever really been a problem either,” he says.
Those qualities have been evident since he joined Melbourne City’s academy as a 13-year-old, and left seven years later for Westerlo for a fee of roughly $2m. After two years in Belgium, his transfer to the Netherlands cost Feyenoord around $9m. After his success in the past 12 months, his value is approaching the record fee paid for an Australian – the roughly $26m paid by Leicester for Harry Souttar in 2023 – if he was to move.
Another transfer is unlikely, however, at least for the short term. Bos’ Dutch roots and connection to Feyenoord – a picture of him as a child wearing the club’s red and white strip has been widely shared – make it a comfortable environment for development, and he said this week he is in no rush to move.
Indeed, Bos now has even more reason to stay, after his younger brother Kasey signed on loan for the coming season for Excelsior, considered Rotterdam’s third largest club after Feyenoord and Sparta. The Bos brothers will be living just down the road.
So while a move to the Bundesliga or Premier League may be in his stars, Bos is focused on challenges of the coming week. Or at least, is beginning to think about the challenges. The match against Turkey could see him mark Kenan Yildiz, Turkey’s young attacker who plays for Juventus.
What does Bos know about the electric winger, one journalist asks. “I’ll definitely do my research in the next couple of days,” Bos says, his smile turning to a giggle. “I don’t watch that much football in my downtime, so we’ll see in the next couple of days when I have a look at him.”
