Play Through Them! #3: Socceroos vs Canada 11/10/2025
The low block counter attacking game the Socceroos have been developing under Popovic has been successful as the lads managed to grab a 1-0 victory. The approach has been improved upon since the New Zealand games with Canada not having much possession between our defence and midfield lines. Though of course it’s hard to know based on one game if that’s our improvement or something about Canada’s approach. Of course there was a bit of luck with Oluwaseyi’s header hitting the post in the 95th minute, and in the 90th Shaffelburg should have scored. I’ll come back to the latter.
This minute and a half from 22:11 is representative of much of the game. Canada have a period of sustained possession, and are patient in trying to get through us, but are ultimately wasteful with their shooting because of how well we protect the box. There’s lots you could focus on in this clip, and the aggressive pressing at the end is definitely noteworthy. I think it’s informative to watch the movement of Canada’s #10 David. In the video I’ve used yellow circles to indicate a couple of times he does get a bit of room between our lines, but isn’t used. I wanted to highlight these moments because different decisions here could have helped them get through.
Now, at 22:48, he is free in the box, because there was a moment of uncertainty as to who should track him. But watch our midfielder here (I’m pretty sure it’s O’Neill), he makes eye contact and takes responsibility moving to a good defensive position. Had he not done this David would be in a great position to receive and shoot, instead they go back to passing around our box and the danger is adverted. Of course the great work of Rowles et al out wide here matters just as much.
As well as we did here I think it is worth worrying a bit about the decisions better teams might make. Making use of David at 23:05 (the second yellow circle) is one instance. (At 59:30 they make use of Kone in a similar position and he gets a shot on target.) Another is at 68:55, had their winger chosen to cut back to David instead of playing the square cross, Canada could have had a much better shooting opportunity.
That said, you can see better in this second image how well Bos is doing to make the cross difficult.
I mentioned the aggressive pressing for the above clip, and of course that helped Irankunda score when he was a bit too far behind the play to get onto Toure’s cross. But this wasn’t the only time aggressive challenging helped. Watch Bos here, not just blocking but putting in a second tackle that turns into an attack and a decent shot for us. This was a nice contrast to the times in the NZ game where we were too passive on halfway and let them progress too easily.
Unfortunately I can only embed one video per blog, so here is the link to the next one.
Overall I thought our out of possession work was much better than against NZ. The obvious exception to this was Shaffelburg’s chance for Canada at 89:20. Izzo of course makes a great save, but I’d expect better opposition to be able to not just shoot straight for this kind of chance. If this was a world cup game we’d expect to concede giving up a chance there. The worry is Miller’s positioning when the cross comes, we can see here he’s neither between Shaffelburg and the goal, nor is he positioned to intercept the cross. This isn’t to pick on him, it’s just one moment and of course he had good ones, but we’ll need to avoid those kinds of positioning errors if we are to have a good world cup.
In possession we looked most dangerous when Irankunda or Toure had possession wide of the penalty area, i.e. were in position to cross. I will subdue my inner Adelaide United fan and not just gush over these lads, though of course they deserve it. Instead I wanted to close with some thoughts on our decision making and, especially, technique when playing out from the back (buildupàprogression). I will preface this by saying that there were times where we did look better, in my notes for the game I had our best chance for the first hour coming at 60 minutes due to better decision making on our passes. But I am worried about how wasteful we are when we have an opportunity to build possession. Consider this at around 52:39.
Canada have just taken a corner, and the ball has ended up with Izzo. He rolls it out to Circati, who plays forward, the pass is loose, but does get played back to O’Neill, who does need to react quickly, but he ends up playing a nothing ball which is easily cut out. He probably is trying to hit Irankunda with it, and it’s just a technique error that prevents him landing it. Ok errors happen. But I wonder if we’re not going to land those passes if a different choice is better. Rowles is getting some width left which is a risky option, he’s also got Metcalfe, Toure and Italiano all powering a head of him down the right, the defenders all seem to have picked up Toure, leaving Italiano and Metcalfe with room to run. Of course counterfactuals are hard, #13 for Canada (Cornelius) seems to be running back to his position at CB rather than blocking movement down the right. Of course he might have done something different if O’Neill looked like he was playing that way rather than looking for the switch.
Could O’Neill have gone for an easier pass here? Maybe. I’m more confident in saying he should have done better with the pass he chose. That said I do think that this low possession counter attacking style does require great precision when we do get the ball, so I’d expect we’ll be more focused on that given the improvements we seem to have made in our out of possession work.