Last Tuesday night Australia began the road to the 2018 World Cup by defeating Kyrgyzstan 2-1 in Bishkek. Neither the result nor the difficulty in achieving the win should be a surprise to anyone.
After an early goal from Mile Jedinak, it looked that it would not go all Australia’s way as Kyrgyzstan – neither a major power nor a no-hoper – came into the game and proved rather adept at causing Ange Postecoglou’s side headaches. Tommy Oar’s second goal killed off the challenge, but the home side got a consolation which was dubious, but might have been deserved even if it had not been so.
So what to take out of this game? For starters, the first competitive game since the Asian Cup Final had a squad not greatly changed save for the absences of Massimo Luongo and Robbie Kruse. It is not wrong to say that the Socceroos’ overall performance was below par, but Kyrgyzstan were playing the game of their lives against the reigning continental champions and proved a surprisingly competent and technically proficient opposition, although the pitch was of a similar standard to what you see at Bloomfield Road right now.
At the same time, this is a group Australia will be expected to win and win comfortably, but away trips to Bangladesh and Tajikistan loom with the latter likely a similar prospect to Kyrgyzstan. As they had once been part of the USSR, both countries were technically part of UEFA until 1991 and indeed Tajikistan, along with Uzbeksitan, was periodically represented in top flight football. This means that these nations do have a genuine football tradition, if not exactly pedigree, and inherited much of the culture shared with other nations that had been once ruled from Moscow. The Kyrgyz side that faced the Socceroos was mostly domestic-based yet eclectic, with a naturalised Ghanaian along with players of ethnically Russian and German backgrounds.
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Bangladesh, on the other hand, will be a different cup of tea. They are part of a region where cricket is king, yet are also a football stronghold in South Asia. A great deal of the passion of Bangladesh’s football fans, however, goes into foreign clubs and national teams. A home game with Australia will afford home fans the opportunity to channel their passions into their own national team against the confederation’s elite, even though it is unlikely to lift them to any great heights.
Yet elsewhere in Asia, there may be early signs that the gap between the confederation’s ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is closing. The US territory of Guam has already recorded two wins in a row over Turkmenistan and India, while Turkmenistan (who qualified for the Asian Cup in 2004, so they are not exactly hopeless) have drawn with Iran with Czech-based Ruslan Mingazov scoring, and Singapore gained a draw away to Japan. However, the more ‘typical’ sort of result was one where Palestine defeated Malaysia to the tune of 6-0.
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Yet none of that will change the fact that Australia, as reigning Asian Cup champions, will have a busy but smooth expressway as its path to qualification. Only Jordan is likely to present a credible challenge in this first group stage, and the outcome will be little different to the 2010 and 2014 qualifying series. This is not Europe, South America or Africa, where the depth of talent is such that there are far more realistic contenders for qualification. The new qualifying format does give the lesser lights of the AFC plenty of exposure to the region’s elite teams. Whether it does them good in the long term remains to be seen. Because it doubles as qualification for the next Asian Cup, there will be plenty for all to play for and this may be the motivator for many of these teams to raise their game.
Where there will be a difference, however, is that by 2017 Australian fans can feel infinitely more confident that there will be a Socceroos side ready to compete on the biggest stage. Ange Postecoglou has seemingly ensured that there is less likely to be a papering over the cracks scenario that characterised the Verbeek and Osieck eras. It was enough of an achievement for the coach to put together a side that did not disgrace itself in Brazil, and another to evolve into Asian Champions following a very poor run of results prior. By overcoming that and winning the Asian Cup, this should be a relative breeze in comparison.
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