What we can glean from Denmark's match against Peru?

Compared to Australia, Peru is probably as starkly different a football team as could be conceived.

But in preparing for Denmark tonight, and with the lingering echoes of the France loss still rattling around our heads, it’s worth looking at how the other Group C first round match played out and glean anything we can to help drive us to our first points of the tournament.

Three times in the opening 15 against Peru, Denmark were guilty of bunching up defensively. Peru, a lovely passing team, able to flick and jink through heavy pressure, were successfully drawing Danish defenders across from the weak side toward the ball.

The Peruvians were packing the midfield, all touching the ball, and it left huge open areas on the weak side flanks that were, invariably, activated by Peru. Here is the third such example, where fine play on the near side is worked across to the middle. Yusuf Yurary Poulsen is guilty of sluggish defending, leaving yawning pasture open for Peru’s left full back Miguel Trauco to speed into.

Aziz Behich – our best full back – will be speeding into those areas for the Socceroos, and as he was our most passed-to player against France, it will be of great benefit to Australia if Denmark allow such freedom on the flanks again.

The Danes, affronted by Peru’s aggression and appetite to start the game – and why wouldn’t they be hungry, it’s been more than 30 years? – allowed their structure to warp and bend, like a Dali clock.

Australia will have to greet them with the same confronting zeal, to test them again. As it happens, Poulsen committed another glaring piece of shoddy defensive awareness in the second half, allowing Christian Cueva this time to scamper behind him – admittedly while offside – into the box, a chance Peru really should have scored from.

Forcing Poulsen into these situations could well be an area of weakness from which the Roos might profit, and while we may not have Peru’s snap passing in our midfield, our full backs are plenty capable of applying pressure in the final third.

Once Denmark had withstood the initial Peruvian flurry, their formation settled into place. A nominal 4-3-3, it morphed into something more like a 4-2-3-1, with Christian Eriksen in the archetypal No. 10 position, appropriately. Denmark, generally, were very narrow. Their left back Stryger Larsson was only a sporadic factor in attack, and their left sided attacker, Pione Sisto was seen regularly drifting into the centre, even out to the right.

Eriksen and Poulsen were combining on the right too; all this explains how offensively lopsided the Danish system was; 52 per cent of the Danish attacks were generated on the right hand side, compared to 23 per cent on the left, per FIFA tracking stats. Matt Leckie and Behich will have a lot to deal with if this trend is repeated against Australia, as is likely.

Danish striker Nicolai Jørgensen roamed across the full width and length of the Peruvian half. He only managed to take one shot, that was blocked, over the course of the entire match, but his was not an isolated, listless performance. His activity and industry, at 6 foot 3 inches, will be a handful for Milligan and Sainsbury, with the latter likely to take on the brunt of the graft for that assignment. Australia’s defenders will have to be wary not to be dragged too far out of position, leaving gaping holes in behind for Eriksen to punish.

Speaking of the man, although this was far from his most influential performance, Christian Eriksen was clearly eager to run his way into the game against Peru; he ran further than any other Danish player, tracking the longest distance run with and without possession. He attempted the second-most passes on his team, passing most frequently to Poulsen and Jørgensen. Even while off his game, the Spurs play-maker can still effortlessly punish defenders who over-commit or dive in.

As good as Mile Jedinak and Aaron Mooy were against France, they were rattled the few times Paul Pogba and Antoine Griezmann really shifted into the higher gears off the dribble.

Peru did well in man-marking Eriksen, but it’s worth questioning if Mooy or Jedinak are agile enough – or have the stamina – to stay with the Dane, considering how constantly and with such unpredictable invention he drifts around the pitch, sniffing out space. You can see here, as Peru’s promising attack breaks down, Renato Tapia makes the mistake of allowing Eriksen to drift ahead of the ball, without a chaperone.

One pass into open park, and Eriksen is leading Denmark’s counter, as safe a pair of hands in which to place a burgeoning chance as any in world football. With Tapia labouring in the background, Eriksen puts a perfect pass on a plate for Poulsen, who slots home the winner.

Would Mass Luongo have a better chance of sticking with Eriksen over the course of 90 minutes? Would Jackson Irvine? These players needn’t replace Mooy or Jedinak, perhaps Rogic might finally be sacrificed, with Mooy moved up. It would be unwise to assume Eriksen will have as quiet an opening hour against the Roos as he did against Peru.

So then, what must the Roos do to improve? Well, regardless of how the Danish set up, Bert van Marwijk must find a way to grease the wheels in the centre of the park. The control Mooy and Jedinak enjoyed against France occurred in our own half – 24 per cent of it was held in the zone just in front of our own box, a larger proportion than in any other zone on the pitch – and it did not translate to progress made up the middle.

Australia – Mark Milligan in particular – showed they can pass ably out to the wings but, to put it bluntly, if we can’t pass up the middle, we’ll have to run the ball up the guts. Mooy and Jedinak are not dynamic players; they don’t have the ability to burst through the lines with the ball at their feet.

Jackson Irvine and Mass Luongo are much more suited to this, and depending on who starts as striker, driving forays through the midfield might be the best way to involve Rogic, who was again an alienated figure against France.

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Irvine, for instance, could given the role of positioning himself ahead of the defensive midfielders and behind the attack, with the intention of receiving the ball and looking to out-pace or out-muscle a tackler.

It would be a physically demanding role, because no small amount of back-tracking and movement would be involved, but Irvine is probably our best athlete behind Leckie. As touched on above, if the thought of dropping Mooy or Jedinak is too hard to fathom, Irvine, in this role, could even replace Rogic – he’d certainly add more defensively, and considering how rarely Rogic managed to involved himself in the attack against France, how much would it take away from the offensive scheme?

Questions linger over Robbie Kruse too; for all his off-the-ball value, making interesting runs and defending with eagerness, he contributes so little as far as tangible attacking input. Having lost the first game, the argument against including wildcard Daniel Arzani from the beginning is weakening.

Denmark beat Peru, but Peru missed a bagful of chances, including a penalty, with Kasper Schmeichel making six saves. Denmark might be our best chance at a win this tournament, and we should set up accordingly.

This second game will be an excellent opportunity to see how flexible van Marwijk really is. We learnt a lot from the loss to France. Let’s see what effect it has tonight.