Most of the remaining Socceroos squad members will arrive in Manama on Monday as Australia continue a hurried preparation for Wednesday’s (Thursday AEDT) World Cup qualifier against Bahrain.
The team had its first training run on Sunday evening with coach Pim Verbeek running the seven already-arrived players, including captain Lucas Neill and goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, through a light session on a cool evening in the Persian Gulf island nation.
They will be joined by 11 more players including Tim Cahill, Scott McDonald and Harry Kewell on Monday – providing they come through their weekend club matches unscathed – with Mark Bresciano and Richard Garcia expected to complete the squad on Tuesday.
Verbeek will wait to assess the fitness of his star players before picking a team from a squad already hit by injury.
Veteran midfielder Brett Emerton (hamstring) on Sunday joined Vince Grella (hamstring), Craig Moore (testicular cancer), Matthew Spiranovic (ankle) and Mark Milligan (Achilles) in being ruled out of the match through injury.
The disjointed preparation is nothing new to the Socceroos, who have endured similar scenarios this campaign and Neill was confident the side would get the job done regardless of who played.
“It depends who makes it out of the games on the weekend to see how we go strength-wise as a squad,” said Neill, who played in West Ham’s scoreless draw with Portsmouth on Saturday before boarding a plane to Bahrain.
“But I’m sure whoever plays will do a proud performance for the country and hopefully we’ll be sitting on the top of the table with nine points.”
Australia go into the match top of Group A with six points from their two games, with Bahrain fourth in the five-team pool with a solitary point.
Conditions are unlikely to resemble the testing environment experienced by the Socceroos in Dubai, Doha and Tashkent earlier this year with temperatures on Wednesday only tipped to reach 25 degrees Celsius and the match kicking off at 6pm local time (0200 Thursday AEDT).
“It’s surprised us, it’s nice and pleasant out here actually,” Neill said.
“I think the conditions are perfect, we’ve not seen the match pitch yet but there’s no excuses.”
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