adminMELBOURNE. – It was 3.18am in Melbourne when Mathew Leckie slotted past Kasper Schmeichel – and those who had stayed up went wild.
Flares lit up the darkness in Fed Square, and suddenly you could forget that football – or soccer – is, at best, the fifth most popular sport in Australia.
Leckie’s goal meant Australia stunned Euro 2020 semi-finalists Denmark 1-0 in Qatar to reach the knockout stage of the World Cup for the first time since 2006.
While that Socceroos side was filled with generational Australian talent playing for top European clubs, far less was expected of this squad of domestic A-League regulars, along with players from the Scottish Premiership and English Football League.
The one solid link between 2006 and 2022 is the manager, Graham Arnold. He was assistant to Guus Hiddink 16 years ago, when Australia were only stopped by eventual champions Italy via a 95th-minute penalty.
Arnold told BBC Two after the final whistle: “I’m so proud of the effort. There was a short turnaround but their effort was incredible.
“These boys come in with a great mindset. We’ve been working on this for the last four years about belief, energy and focus. I could see in their eyes, they were ready tonight.”
It is quite the turnaround for Arnold, after an unimpressive qualification campaign in which they scraped through an inter-confederation play-off against Peru on penalties to secure their spot in World Cup Group D alongside world champions France, as well as Denmark and Tunisia.
Still questions surrounded Arnold, however the idiosyncratic Aussie has never lacked in self-belief and has now guided his country into the last 16 – not that he will be allowing any of his players to enjoy it yet.
“No celebrations!” he said. “That’s why we won after a great win against Tunisia. No celebrations, no emotion, sleep, and no social media.”
This message had not quite filtered through to Australia match-winner Leckie when he spoke to BBC Two straight after the game.
He said: “I’m proud, exhausted, everything. Hard to describe the emotions right now. We always believed as a group we could do it.
“We had our doubters but with our spirit, our belief, our work ethic and how close we are as a group, it shows on the pitch. That last 15-20 minutes, we battled until the end and it didn’t matter what they threw at us. We weren’t conceding.
“We’ll make the most of it tonight but then it’s all about recovery because we’ve got another coming up.” – BBC Sport.
Online Reporter