Coach Ange Postecoglou blames sloppy defending for pitching the Socceroos on the most difficult path to the Asian Cup final.
After losing 0-1 to South Korea on Saturday night in Brisbane, Australia will next meet China in a quarter-final on the same banged-up Suncorp Stadium pitch.
Win that game and the Socceroos book a semi-final in Newcastle – most probably against defending champions Japan.
“It is what it is,” Postecoglou said.
“Whatever challenges we have got ahead of us, if we perform like that … we will be hard to beat.”
Apart from the costly defensive lapse, that is.
“We obviously conceded a pretty poor goal from us, we switched off,” Postecoglou said.
“From our perspective it was very disappointing.”
But Postecoglou described the overall performance as “positive”, particularly given he made four changes to his starting line-up.
Postecoglou rested attacking aces Tim Cahill, Robbie Kruse and Mathew Leckie, sending the trio on in the latter stages of the second half.
And he opted to give captain Mile Jedinak another game off to recover from his ankle injury.
“We put out a team that we thought could win the game … we had some fresh players and we thought they would give us the best chance of victory.” he said.
Jedinak is a certain starter in the knockout quarter-final but defender Matthew Spiranovic will miss because of suspension; the centre-back ruled out after receiving his second yellow card of the tournament against the Koreans.
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