Two insipid, uninspiring draws to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in November extended the Socceroos’ struggle in the current 2026 World Cup Qualifiers.
Australia only have the second place thanks to the misfortunes of the others, except Japan.
A clearly unlucky-go-happy experience, the Socceroos’ torrid performances have not just only come back to haunt supporters, but also left doubts over whether they can even qualify for the dreamland in North America, a trend that doesn’t start now, but traced back further to the 2014 WCQ.
Yet one thing that may shock a lot of Aussie fans is the last time Australia really qualified without going to playoffs was during the 2014 cycle, with a late header by Josh Kennedy helping the Socceroos to overcome a stubborn Iraq in Sydney.
In that qualifying cycle, the Australian manager was German Holger Osieck, who, despite having a difficult campaign, ensured the Aussies would not have to endure a playoff run.
In the two next qualifying cycles, the Socceroos have only qualified via playoffs, and the managers who led them throughout these campaigns were entirely locals.
Only Ange Postecoglou has managed to shake off the difficult past, with the Socceroos to become probably Australia’s first world-class manager, having been appointed as Tottenham’s coach.
Graham Arnold, who led Australia in the dream run at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, also had a lame reputation with Vegalta Sendai, the only foreign team coached by Arnie as he was sacked for being winless in eight games.
Yet Football Australia seemed unwilling to rethink their inward approach, and the appointment of Tony Popovic appears to have failed to address the issues, where the Socceroos have won just one out of four matches. This includes a wasted November calendar with two draws, both required late VAR intervention to save the Socceroos from embarrassing defeat.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
In football, having a good coaching development system is just as important as having good player development. Yet Aussies have only realised the latter.
They focused too heavily on fixing the development of players, but very little detail was given about how to fix the coaching program.
While Football Australia finally buckled and agreed to set up the pilot program for a nationwide football academy in September 2024 after catastrophes against Bahrain and Indonesia, coaching issues remain overlooked and ignored.
Fixing player development woe is no doubt the right path, but what about the trainers?
A good comparison is to fellow Anglophone England, the United States and Canada. Just like Australia, they aren’t great at developing domestic managers. While cases like Terry Venables, Gareth Southgate, Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley demonstrated their potential, none had the ability to sustain success at the international level.
Yet they stand different from Australia in that they have recognised the issue: England have since hired Thomas Tuchel; the US brought in Mauricio Pochettino; and Canada with Jesse Marsch, with Marsch being trained by Ralf Rangnick during his time with Leipzig.
By contrast, Australia is doing the reverse instead of learning from their English, American and Canadian counterparts. Why? Why have a “reverse evolution” happening regarding Australia’s coaching crisis?
The hard reality is Australia’s domestic managers are currently not up to world standard.
In light of Ange’s impressive showings with Spurs, he remains an exception. Arnold’s 2022 World Cup was contributed heavily by immense luck, with Tunisia and Denmark’s self-inflicted collapses rather than Arnie’s coaching credibility.
Kevin Muscat might have established his fame in Japan and China, but can he translate into becoming the next Ange is unknown.
Peter Cklamovski is still in his early days. Current Socceroos coach, Tony Popovic, had already had failed ventures in Greece and Turkey. This makes the Popa gamble even riskier if not illogical.
Tottenham coach Ange Postecoglou and assistant Mile Jedinak in Melbourne. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
The lack of a clear strategy to train and develop high-quality managers has only escalated the problem.
This hard truth needs to be taken seriously. Popa still has a year left to correct everything right, but currently, he has no idea what kind of squad he is assembling either.
It’s clear that Australia can’t overlook the coaching crisis anymore, they have to rebuild their coaching pipeline to retrain and recreate a new class of high-standard managers in the first place.
At the same time, Football Australia needs to accept that Australian managers aren’t as good as initially thought, and actively begins to search for foreign managers.
Managers like Lee Carsley, Vahid Halilhodžić, Oleksandr Petrakov, Edward Iordănescu and Dragan Skočić have proven capable of turning the fortunes of less competent or talentless teams into cohesive units, and it is this type of manager must be the target to become the Socceroos’ new coach.
The trend of hiring foreign coaches needs to be maintained until the domestic coaching pipeline is rebuilt properly.
When Japan started building professional football in the 1990s, Japanese coaching development was still in its infancy and had to rely on foreign coaches.
Thanks to persistent development and commitment to the training program, Japan has now been able to rely only on the domestic manager for their NT since 2018 and even now, Japan is exporting their coaches to other Asian countries.
Australia need to look at how Japan built their coaching pipeline and fix it from now on.
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