Socceroos consigned to playoffs as Japan secure World Cup berth with win

Stadium Australia has been the site for many of the Socceroos’ most celebrated moments. Be it Josh Kennedy’s towering header to defeat Iraq and secure progression to the 2014 World Cup or Mile Jedinak’s captain’s hat-trick against Honduras in the 2018 World Cup qualification playoffs. Or, of course, John Aloisi’s famous penalty that dispatched Uruguay and ended the nation’s long, 32-year absence from football’s grandest stage. Stadium Australia has so often proved to be Australian football’s field of dreams.

In other words, one could not have picked a better venue for a Socceroos fixture which carried all the hallmarks of a cliched Hollywood epic; an outmanned and outgunned host nation with their backs to the wall fighting to defy the odds in a manner nobody expected them to. Arnold had leaned into the narrative by declaring his side needed to “fight” against their foes, and assistant coach Rene Meulensteen, filling in on pre-match media duties as Arnold completed (another) Covid isolation period, joined in on the bromides when he declared that, more than anything, “courage will win us the game”. It was all very stirring.

But courage does not win you football games. Goals do. And on Thursday evening, the Socceroos’ hopes were dashed by Kaoru Mitoma’s 89th-minute strike and subsequent winding run and the 94th-minute sealer that popped out of Mat Ryan’s hand and rolled, slowly, into the back of the net.

Perhaps it was fitting that effort, as well as Miki Yamane’s cutback to find Mitoma for his first, seemingly took an age to slowly slide across the wet surface at Stadium Australia. Plenty of time to reflect on a result that has now served to deliver a coup de grâce to the Socceroos’ hopes of automatic qualification for the