Australia’s hopes of reaching a fifth straight World Cup have been dealt a huge blow with star midfielder Tom Rogic withdrawing from the Socceroos squad.
The 29-year-old, who is without a club after leaving Celtic having guided the Scottish giants to a 10th league title in the past 11 seasons, cited personal reasons as his reason to withdraw.
The move leaves coach Graham Arnold without one of his main attacking weapons heading into next week’s must-win Asian play-off against the United Arab Emirates in Qatar.
A victory in the June 7 (June 8 4am AEST) clash in Doha would set up a game against Peru the following week for a spot in November’s World Cup.
“My focus must now be on the players we have here in Qatar,” Arnold said.
“We have selected an extended squad of quality players and I believe that we will achieve something special for Australia over the next two weeks.”
Socceroos officials will not be calling up a replacement for Rogic, reducing the squad for the upcoming fixtures to 28 players.
Rogic’s withdrawal comes after he and several other leading players were all unavailable for a mixture of COVID-19, injury and personal reasons during the most recent Socceroos camp in March.
Missing several big names, the Socceroos suffered back-to-back defeats to Japan and Saudi Arabia in that window to miss out on automatic qualification and be forced into the play-offs.
The remainder of the Australian squad is assembling in Doha with the Socceroos to face Jordan in a friendly match on Wednesday (Thursday 4am AEST).
Arnold says he will be using the warm-up fixture to give gametime to players who haven’t featured in recent weeks as he looks to sharpen up his squad ahead of the play-offs.
The UAE meanwhile finalised their preparations with a 1-1 draw against African nation Gambia in Dubai on Monday.
The Ball Bobbled
Roar Rookie
Football is a real World Cup
Sheffield WesDay
Roar Rookie
Just keep reminding them of when we schooled them in 2003 in London. 3 nil is a flogging in anyones book. Ahhhh what a great day that was. They have only beaten once since then, 2-1 is hardly bragging rights.
James
Guest
You say: "It's never been this good in Australian soccer" and then you reference all the FOREIGN teams we can watch on TV and FOREIGN jerseys I can buy online. AUSTRALIAN football is the A-League and the Socceroos and you would be hard pressed to find a fan who thinks these entities are thriving right now. Put up a fight??? How do you suggest I do that? I go to all the Socceroos matches in my city. My local A-League team is two hours away from my house. I arranged a meeting with the President at my local NPL club and offered to help them out. I've tried to raise awareness on forums like this about areas where the A-League could improve. What else should I do? I'm done with Australian football.
Michael Burgess
Guest
It happened at the end of the season when he is looking to sign a contract elsewhere. If it was real personal reasons he would have at least said something along the lines of family issues rather than refuse to go into detail. He should not play in the world cup if we get there. These type of players always seem to be available to play for their clubs.
Grem
Roar Rookie
That's the funny thing - each year the AFL choose their best players in an Australian team, to ...?
Kewell
Roar Rookie
Bludger, UAE will be very hard to beat. They will have their tails up especially where they get are playing.
Kewell
Roar Rookie
Rogic has been a great servant to the Socceroos regular injuries and flights for international duty must take a toll. Thanks Tommy you shine out like beacon, great balance and poise for a big man.
Kewell
Roar Rookie
Grem, Good luck supporting the AFL Australian Team.
Kewell
Roar Rookie
Agree whole heartedly. NRL and AFL can still compete within the down small sea with players of less quality, but Football mainly cannot compete in a large ocean without quality. It's so obvious yet no one calls it.
chris
Guest
That's right Grem. People screaming "disgraceful, un-Australian!" etc without knowing exactly what's going on, says more about themselves than Rogic. Yes, I'm gutted he isn't playing, as he is one of our few game changer players. But give him a break. We don't know why he has done this, and it could very well be a valid reason. There are sometimes more important things going on than a game.
Grem
Roar Rookie
None of us know what is happening so how can we comment. I also assume there is something of a serious nature with his family that needs to be attended to. Until it is known - give him privacy.
Brainstrust
Roar Rookie
I have no doubt that Ange gave Rogic the hard word of reduced game time, Ange is eyeing other players what effect this had on Rogic who knows. Ange we know while he selected Degenek in the Socceroos the first thing he did in Japan was to get rid of him. Rogic is a special player on the other hand he is not much of an athlete. I have no doubt he can get a big paying gig in Asia. Mooy was lucky he went to a team that was based around him, and I think Rogic needs the same to succeed in Europe. The other attraction is he could get a big transfer to Asia, its not been noted anywhere but Mooy had a 4 million pound transfeer to Chine on top of his other two big money transfers.
Brainstrust
Roar Rookie
The Australian figures are made up both rugby league and rugby union would be less than 50k. NZ would I think be accurate. The reason Australia produces players in both sports is to do with touch football being a big participation sport in this country. Touch football would possibly be even bigger than AFL numbers wise. Rugby Union is both contracting and growing on the one hand their traditional base the wealthy classes in Australia are protective of their kids now and thats in decline , on the other hand Australia now has large rugby loving immigrant groups in the major cities apart from Adelaide. With Kiwis, Pacific islanders, and white South Africans, their support base has spread into other areas.
Stevo
Roar Rookie
At least this is a sincere, heart felt comment rather than an exercise in cynical baiting :laughing:
NoMates
Roar Rookie
We are never gonna make it to the World Cup at this rate. Honestly we really never had a chance to start with. Oh well its the World Cup we just had to miss.
Hah
Guest
Your kidding right!? It's never been this good in Australian soccer. You can watch pretty much any match or any league around the world, you can buy the same kit as they use in London, Rome or Madrid and it's still not good enough for you!? If you want a 'Euro' soccer obsessed culture you should move there for a while to see what it's like to live in a soccer country 7 days a week. Or you could stay here and help fight the good fight!
Bludger
Guest
He was not getting a regular start at Celtic, a secondary league in Europe. No point getting worked up about it. If he was playing for Arsenal or even Brighton regularly I'd be more worried. We should get past UAE, who are playing at 'home'. Peru is going to be Russian roulette. Anything can happen.
James
Guest
I've had it with football in this country. It is a joke. Fans treat our national league like it doesn't exist. Players look for excuses not to represent the national team. Big changes are needed and I'm afraid we just don't have the people capable of steering the ship in the right direction.
MarkE
Guest
Rogic cares about his national team. He once left Celtic in the lurch on the eve of a Glasgow Derby to play for Australia, though the decision was his national managers, he still made the trip to the other side of Earth for it, and done so many more times for other games. I'm assuming he has something serious going on in his personal life, it would explain why he left Celtic with a year left on his contract, why he hasn't signed for another club yet(there's bound to be a long line of suitors) and why he's not fit to play for Australia now!?
Ferno
Guest
Sad that Australian players dont give a sh* about national team. Rogic is not the first and will not be the last. Really unbelievable