Socceroos midfielder Connor Metcalfe has heard every barb coming Australia’s way from the United States – and he’s had a gutful of it. Since Australia were drawn in Group D along with the co-hosts in December, the Socceroos have proved the punching bag for pundits based in the USA.
Former striker Landon Donovan labelled Socceroos coach Tony Popovic as “smug” and tipped the Australians to finish fourth behind the US, Turkey and Paraguay and exit in the group stage. “Thanks for coming, Aussies and your smug coach – you can get back on the Qantas airplane and head back home, pal,” he quipped.
CBS pundit Mike Grella described the Australia fixture as a “lay-up” for Mauricio Pochettino’s world No 16 American side. This week, former US international Alexi Lalas threw more fuel on the fire when he described the Socceroos as an “average team” after the 27th-ranked side’s 1-0 loss to Mexico.
While coach Popovic has laughed off the jibes coming Australia’s way, it’s clearly given fuel to the fire for his players. But there are still almost two weeks until that clash on 19 June (20 June AEST), with Australia focused on a friendly against Switzerland then their opener against Turkey.
“I mean, I’ve seen all the US stuff, and I’m just sick of it, to be honest – I just am,” Metcalfe said on the eve of the friendly on Saturday. “Like all this talk – it’s just – let’s just wait for the game, whatever happens, happens.
“It’s just so much rubbish and I’m just sick of it. So we’ll just wait and we’ll play – it’ll be a good game. We had a friendly against them. It was tense, it was feisty, and probably going to be the exact same.”
In that game, in Colorado in October, the US dealt Australia their first defeat under Popovic.
The 2-1 defeat was a fiery, physical game, with US defender Chris Richards at one point ready to square up to Socceroo Jason Geria after skipper Christian Pulisic was injured in a challenge.
Popovic declared Cristian Volpato “fit and available” to face Switzerland and expected him to get minutes, after the attacker arrived in camp too late to play Mexico. The Socceroos boss said Volpato was looking his best since switching his allegiance from Italy and joining the camp, having needed to get up to speed as his conditioning was behind other players.
“There’s no doubts about him as a person or as a player,” Popovic said. “We’ve just got to get him fit. He hasn’t played a lot of football and he had eight to nine days off before he joined us.
“He’s working hard. He’s trying to get up to speed and we’ve seen some good inroads in the last couple of days.”
Metcalfe batted away a question regarding whether Volpato’s late change of allegiance had been an issue within the squad.
“It’s been pretty smooth sailing. I mean, he’s come in, he’s a really nice, relaxed guy,” he said. “We see it online and we know the past and what’s been done, but we’re not here to talk about that. Whatever’s said is done, so it’s fine.”
