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Daniel Arzani’s stunning first Socceroos goal hasn’t stopped Bert van Marwijk from lamenting a tired and indisciplined performance from Australia on the eve of the World Cup.
The teenage prodigy scored a fine effort with his first touches of the ball in Saturday night’s 2-1 win over Hungary, then laid off a defence-splitting pass that led to Australia’s winner.
It was an inspired cameo at Budapest’s Groupama Arena, coming in Arzani’s second international outing, that should ensure the 19-year-old gets a chance to do the same in Russia.
While Arzani – the youngest player at the World Cup – generates the buzz behind Australia’s tilt, van Marwijk is more focused on fixing the Socceroos’ engine room.
“The first half was, in my opinion, a bad performance in a lot of things,” he said.
“It starts in how you pass the ball, with the right speed. We did a lot of practice with that and playing the ball to the right player. “We made a lot of mistakes in that.
“This was a game where you must have patience … patience and playing the ball with concentration and the right speed is easy to say but in practice, difficult.”
Van Marwijk stuck with the same starting side in Budapest as he did in a 4-0 win over Czech Republic last week.
But midfield pairing Aaron Mooy and Massimo Luongo found the going tougher, and centre backs Mark Milligan and Trent Sainsbury were error-prone.
The Dutchman’s decision to go in unchanged meant a second-half scramble to ensure key men got minutes ahead of Russia.
Mile Jedinak and Tomi Juric came on at half-time, with Juric hauled off on 80 minutes for Tim Cahill.
Van Marwijk suggested that didn’t mean he was wedded to the same team for the World Cup opener against France.
“When you look very good you can see what positions it’s not 100 per cent sure,” he said, suggesting substitutes – which also included Jackson Irvine and Arzani – could improve their roles to starting positions.
Second half gloveman Brad Jones might have marked his card with two errors, the second leading to Hungary’s goal after a miscommunication with Trent Sainsbury.
Van Marwijk said he was most pleased by the Socceroos’ winning mentality given their hot-weather training camp in Turkey.
“We worked very hard the last three weeks … today I saw already maybe after half an hour that we were very tired,” he said.
“We tried to force it sometimes in some situations. That’s not good.
“But you saw after the 1-1 in the team, that they didn’t think about 1-1, they wanted to win. That’s positive.
“They will get stronger and stronger now as they get, every day, more rest.
“We’ve played two games in the preparation and we’ve won 4-0 and 2-1. That’s good for the morality (sic).”
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