They won’t face one team inside Fifa’s top 100, and in many ways, that could make this one of the the Socceroos’ toughest starts to a World Cup qualification campaigns yet. At the very least, it should be one of the most interesting.
Australia, as a high-seeded team, has never had to enter Asia’s qualification campaign at such an early stage before. But changes to the qualification process mean that over the next 12 months they’ll visit locations as diverse, rugged and off the usual flight paths as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Bangladesh. That’s three countries the Socceroos haven’t played in a full international; either at home or, more to the point, away.
While the quality of opponents may be comparable to those it left behind in Oceania, the environments they face will be far more challenging than the ones they experienced in the laid-back islands of the Pacific.
“People say, ‘Well, they’re not going to be massive football challenges’, but there will be massive challenges in other contexts in terms of the conditions we are going to play in, the different cultural aspects of where we are going to,” coach Ange Postecoglou had told Guardian Australia last month in Kaiserslautern.
That first challenge comes in June, in the mountainous, landlocked Kyrgyzstan. Perhaps it’s fitting that Australia take their first official steps on the road to Russia 2018 in this former Soviet outpost, where they will face a team at 153 in the Fifa rankings.
Logistically, it will present some headaches, but at least the weather should be relatively favourable for football: the capital of Bishkek will be hot and dry, rather than blistering or draining like it will be in other parts of the continent.
They reconvene at home in September to take on Bangladesh, before journeying back to Central Asia for a clash with Tajikistan. “The Bengal Tigers” should be easy enough to tame away from home. And the Tajiks?
It will be hard for the Australians to know what to expect when they land in Dushanbe, apart from another bout of hot but tolerable conditions. This country of 8 million people has never qualified for the Asian Cup, let alone the World Cup, and while a couple of players have links to Russia’s top flight, the vast majority of the squad plays in the local league. They won every game at home in 2013 and 2014, though were recently taken out by Syria.
Australia’s toughest clash of the campaign comes the following month in Jordan. At rank 103, “The Chivalrous” will be the highest-placed team the Socceroos meet in this stage of qualifiers. That doesn’t sound exactly menacing, but the Jordanians are formidable at home. They’ve been beaten there just once in a dozen previous World and Asian Cup qualifiers. It’s a run that includes the scalp of the Australia, who were taken down 2-1 at Amman’s King Abdullah Stadium last time around.
Jordan thrashed Palestine at the Asian Cup (though were far less effective against the bigger teams), and it will still be hot enough in early October to make life uncomfortable for Postecoglou’s squad.
Three of Australia’s remaining four games are at home, with the one trip away being to Bangladesh. It is, once again, unchartered territory for the Socceroos. The football shouldn’t be a challenge – Bangladesh sit at rank 167 – but the noise, the atmosphere, and most other things will.
Postecoglou’s aim is to take his team further into a World Cup than they have ever been before, yet failing to reach Russia is another outcome; both scenarios looked equally plausible in last month’s excursion to Europe, which showed just what this side is capable of.
The turgid match in Skopje rekindled some of those worries that dogged the side prior to the Asian Cup. Yet as an opportunity to deepen the squad and give opportunities to young players, it served its purpose. By the end of the match, there was just two regular starters on the pitch. Expect more of that over the coming year.
“We are nowhere near where we want to be in terms of the depth of the squad still,” Postecoglou said back then. “In the early part of this World Cup qualification process, there’ll still be opportunities which we have to take, and particularly in friendly games to just try and give some experience to players.”
In other words, things are going to look more like Skopje than Kaiserslautern for a while yet.
Part of his challenge is to also make sure the team doesn’t lose the momentum it has built up over his 18 months in charge. It has been a gruelling time for them – in part through circumstance, in part through choice – and it has taught them considerable lessons. In purely football terms, they now face the kind of handbrake teams in Europe, Africa and South America don’t ever have to worry about.
As impressive as Australia were in winning the Asian Cup, it will count for little if they can’t negotiate a path to this next World Cup, and Postecoglou is well aware that the hard work really starts now. As good as winning a tournament on home soil is, this is where he will forge his reputation as national coach.
Only finishing on top of the group guarantees progression to the next round, and while they could have it wrapped up by Christmas time, it might be wishful thinking to expect it will be that easy. It’s all part of what makes the year ahead so interesting.
