Over the past four games, Australia haven’t looked super convincing, especially in attack.
The reasons are numerous, from lack of player chemistry to Graham Arnold’s structure to the tactics of the opposition, but the ongoing theme seems to be that the Socceroos are not used to playing as the favourites.
They’re much more familiar with being an underdog, and playing in a style and with an energy that suits that mentality.
Take their performances in Qatar: they weren’t expected to make it out of a group stage that included France, Denmark and Tunisia, but they used that dynamic to their advantage, bunkering in, pressing high, and counter-attacking at speed.
Against India, Syria, Uzbekistan, and Indonesia, Australia were the faves, forced to be the possession-heavy, proactively attacking side in contrast to their opponents.
But against South Korea, a team that has enjoyed majority of possession over their entire Asian Cup campaign (including an astonishing 82% against Malaysia, which they ended up drawing anyway), Australia can instead lean back into a much more familiar style of defence-heavy, reactive attacking football.
Whether they’ve got the players to do that, though, is the question. Mitch Duke is back from his hamstring strain, while Craig Goodwin showed his qualities in the last 20 minutes against Indonesia: two players who were there at the World Cup so know the blueprint.
Combined with Riley McGree and Jackson Irvine, who are both in decent form and were part of that famous win against Denmark, you can practically see Arnold’s gameplan laid out.
Or can we? Maybe he’s playing 4D chess, luring Korea into a false sense of security before springing something totally different on them. Is Arnold that brave, though? What do you reckon?