Australia Begin World Cup Campaign with Türkiye Win: 5 Takeaways

Australian football fans have known the truth about Nestory Irankunda for a while now. The Watford winger showed the rest of the world what he’s all about on the biggest stage tonight, scoring the first goal with aplomb.

It was a goal of the highest quality: the long ball out of defence initially appeared to be getting away from Irankunda before he flicked it past the Türkiye defender, sprinted around the other side of him, before calmly slotting the ball into the bottom left corner of the net.

Already the youngest Socceroos player to start a men’s World Cup game, he bettered that by becoming the youngest Socceroos player to score at a FIFA World Cup.

It was Henry-esque precision from a player who’s still only 20 years old — as Copa90 director Eli Mengem astutely tweeted after his goal, “What we [Australians] have on our hands is truly generational and if he and we play our cards right he’ll be the face of sport in Australia for a decade.”

It’s no secret that, in Juventus playmaker Kenan Yıldız and Real Madrid star Arda Güler, Türkiye had the most technically skilful players on the pitch tonight. By quite some distance.

Türkiye passed the ball a lot — 679 times, to be precise, compared to Australia’s 273 passes. Türkiye’s pass accuracy was far superior — 91% to Australia’s 75%. Türkiye took a lot of shots — 28 to Australia’s 8.

Their players, particularly their two aforementioned leading lights, possessed pillowy first touches and zipped passes into teammates at will; not deemed fit enough to start, Yildiz was a difference maker when he came on in the second half, constantly darting past the full-back with ease.

But like so many technically proficient, neat and tidy teams of World Cups past, Türkiye lacked the cutting edge up top that is so needed at the highest level.

A significant portion of those 28 shots, for example, were bravely blocked by Australia’s defence, which brings us to…

Almost nobody expected Melbourne City goalkeeper Patrick Beach to start over the experienced Mathew Ryan. At the heart of defence, Harry Souttar has barely played a minute for Leicester City after battling long-term injuries. Full-back Jacob Italiano had less than 10 caps coming into tonight.

But those three, alongside Alessandro Circati and Cameron Burgess, formed an impenetrable wall against Türkiye. It was a colossal defensive performance from the five-strong collective, led by the young Beach’s eight saves in goal.

They limited Türkiye’s technically-more-proficient players to mostly ambitious shots from outside the box, with a lot of their desperate 28 shots being blocked by bodies here, there and everywhere.

This clean sheet will give the Socceroos defence plenty of confidence as they prepare to face the hosts.

Tony Popovic: Man of Steel.

While most coaches on the verge of their country’s opening World Cup game would play it safe, trusting in experience, Popovic went in the other direction.

Jackson Irvine was demoted to the bench in favour of 21-year-old Sydney FC midfielder Paul Okon-Engstler; Patrick Beach ousted the reliable Matthew Ryan, who has started more World Cup matches than any other Socceroo and has been in strong form for Levante in Spain; the average age of the starting lineup was 24, with Cameron Burgess the oldest at a still-not-that-old 30.

Popovic’s trusted in youth, and his decision paid off handsomely, despite some early nerves from his youthful team. If it was good enough for Alex Ferguson and Manchester United once upon a time, it can be good enough for Australia.

This World Cup group is there for the taking.

There’s no denying that the USA are red-hot favourites to come first, having home advantage and significant firepower in AC Milan’s Christian Pulisic and Monaco marksman Folarin Balogun.

But if Popovic’s men can summon another heroic defensive effort against the hosts in their next game on Saturday morning (June 20th), this group really is there for the taking.

Paraguay, probably the weakest of the four teams (they came sixth in CONMEBOL qualification), are Australia’s final group opponents, which hopefully gives the Socceroos an excellent chance going into the last game, particularly if Türkiye’s players finally find their shooting boots.

Australia’s best World Cup group performance to date was a second-place finish, with six points, last time out in 2022 — could they go one better this year?