The Australian players, a disparate group playing mostly in leagues around Europe and Asia, have been gradually assembling in Turkey after completing club commitments across 13 countries.
FIFA World Cup 2018 » Once upon a time, Australia dared to dream of reaching the FIFA World Cup finals, seemingly destined to always stumble at the final hurdle of an almost impossible qualification process.
These days, reaching that holy grail has become routine, replaced by grander ideas of not just participating in the World Cup but winning their way through to the pointy end of the tournament, reports Xinhua news agency.
History
Nevertheless, Australia’s dreamers are counting down to next month’s World Cup in Russia more in hope than expectation of progressing to the knockout stages.
These will be the national team’s fourth consecutive finals, having waited 32 years between their first appearance in the erstwhile West Germany in 1974 until the start of this sequence in the reunified Germany in 2006.
At the past two tournaments, the Socceroos have exited, well beaten but honour intact, after the group stage. This time around they face France, Denmark and Peru in another tough, but not insurmountable Group C.
Coach Speaks
Van Marwijk, who will hand the reins to outgoing Sydney FC coach and Graham Arnold after Russia, is aware of the size of the task he has been handed but is also a realist, and a pragmatist.
“I am not a magician, I cannot in two days [teach] a team to play exactly the way I like them to do,” he told the Guardian newspaper before his first game in charge, a 4-1 not-so-friendly defeat by Norway in Oslo, which was followed by a 0-0 draw with Colombia.
“That costs you a lot of time. That’s why it’s so important that we can start with a training camp for four weeks. We can train every day, that’s very important, and to play two friendly games is enough.”
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