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It was not a display of adroitness. It was not, really, a compelling argument that we should persist with the 3-4-3 formation.
What it did do was stir the blood, and watching as we all did a Socceroos performance of obscene athleticism and vigour, it was hard not to enjoy it. Losing Aaron Mooy and Mass Luongo – two of the more cerebral Roos – allowed Ange Postecoglu, perhaps begrudgingly, to unleash a complete stamina-and-sinew line-up, best exemplified by Matthew Leckie, Jackson Irvine and Brad Smith.
Leckie and Smith, who started on the wings – Smith replacing Kruse, at long last – are two of the most impressive athletes Australian football has ever produced. They are two twitching, rippled, snorting bundles of explosive acceleration.
Leckie leaps like a gazelle, to telling effect, as he scored a carbon-copy headed goal from a corner to seal the 2-0 win. Smith, at one point in the first half, simply prodded the ball past a would-be tackler, and raced around him with ease to collect it.
They were seen, one moment, deep in the final third, and then back tackling or fouling in their own half the next. Both lasted the full 90 minutes, with Leckie in particular seen haring about with as much energy in the dying minutes as he had in the opening throes, apparently unperturbed by what must have been an ocean of lactic acid flooding his many impressive muscles.
But their muscles, sculpted and rippling, didn’t stop either Smith or Leckie from displaying moments innumerable of shoddy technique. Within five minutes, Leckie was seen accidentally back-heeling a ball that had been previously under his control out over the sideline. Brad Smith – starved of playing time at his club, a rusty as a result – bettered him on the other flank misplacing a number of extremely simple passes, and twice allowing the ball to roll clean under his studs when attempting to trap it.
Both players crossed with only occasional accuracy, with heavy first touches further adding to the hand-wringing. They might be the most athletically impressive, technically incompetent players in Socceroos history.
But it mattered little, in the context of the match, because it appeared as though the team Ange Postecoglu had arranged trotted out under the banner “run first, ask questions later’.
His timing was appropriate, unlike in Tehran; the atmosphere was thrumming, and the pitch was a little lumpy. Leckie and Smith, for all their shortcomings, chased back with relish.
Jackson Irvine and James Troisi played as two all-action central attackers – the pair attempted twice as many tackles as the centre midfield pairing of Mile Jedinak and Mark Milligan. Irvine scored the opening goal, powering a header in from yet another corner, a majestic image of the springiness of youth.
Milligan and Bailey Wright fouled often – Milligan too much so, he will miss the next match through suspension – keenly aware that the official was, for some reason, allowing an unusually high level of physicality.
There were raids forward, from Troisi and Irvine, full-chested, concussive barrelling from the flanking centre backs, and Tomi Juric was seen more often on the ground clutching a limb than he was upright and running; this was a war of gristle and tenacity, one Australia had prepared for and were always going to win.
It would be relatively easy to argue that the most refined ball-player on the night was goalkeeper Mat Ryan, whose distribution remains excellent.
Australia committed 26 fouls, for only two yellow cards. Omar Abdulrahman won 11 fouls on his own, a quite astonishing feat. This was the Socceroos-as-cliche; Australia’s reputation as a hard-tacking, gritty outfit has softened over the last few years under Postecoglu, but this match brought it all roaring back. And, in all honestly, it felt good.
We’ve always produced fine athletes. The Golden Generation was dotted with them, from the indefatigability of Brett Emerton, to the the trampoline leap of Tim Cahill, to the agility of Harry Kewell, to the stern physique of Lucas Neill.
These players, though, were more specialised jocks; Troisi, Smith, Leckie and Irvine are much more versatile. To over-embrace these more rudimentary virtues would represent a regression of ideas and ambition, and would be to the detriment of players like Mooy, Luongo and Rogic, and the countless more technically proficient players to come. But it is worth remembering that, when push comes to shove, we can push and shove with the best of them.
Jedinak said this after the match: “I think, to be honest, they [the Emiratis] ran out of legs. They didn’t want to go for it. And we stuck at it…”
Certainly, the manner in which we aggressively fouled and tackled Omar Abdulrahman out of the game was superb. Milligan, restored to midfield, was fabulous, passing with tact when he needed to, and covering diligently for his wing-backs.
Milligan uses his body so expertly, levering people off the ball, a manoeuvre that exists in the very valuable margins of legality. The break-neck marauding of Troisi fashioned more than enough chances to win, but his shooting – typically, for this match, the part requiring the most poise – let him down.
Trent Sainsbury stood apart somewhat, striding as he elegantly does into midfield to pass, and tackling in his own lithe way, the kind of tackle that almost makes the robbed opponent want to applaud the defender, sprawled on the turf.
Sainsbury is, as was feared, yet to play a minute for Inter Milan since moving there in January, and what a waste it is too because he is a sensational defender.
Although the Emirati centre backs were hacking him relentlessly, Juric again couldn’t offer up a convincing case for his candidacy as the first-choice striker. He failed, in fact, to register a shot all evening.
Tim Cahill was the first man off the bench, replacing Juric, and although he was up against a defence that had gone through 70 minutes of combat, he did look a little more dangerous, in particular when played in Irvine, whose bad touch set up Troisi to shoot.
A member of the Emirati backroom staff was seen weeping on the bench after the final whistle, like some poor lad who’d just been rumbled by the school bully; and that’s sort of what it felt like, as both Abdulrahman brothers were sent tumbling, and the Socceroos flexed.
Football, for all of our indulgence in systems, and concepts, and Xs and Os, is at its core an athletic pursuit, a battle of the strong against the stronger, the fast against the faster.
We’re still yet to score from open play in what feels like an age, and the blushes over that are justified. But when the men in green and gold exert like they did here, leap and charge and barge like they did, it can feel, in the heated ecstasy of victory, as good a representation of Australian football as any.