Live: Unchanged Socceroos brace for Brazil backlash in Brisbane

Nobody in the stadium got a bigger reception than the 20-year-old striker when he was announced just a second or so ago.

He is fast becoming a fan favourite in Australia.

And he’s earning that right, too.

It’s fair to say that Nestory Irankunda was pretty impressed with his free kick that gave Australia the lead on Friday night.

Irankunda punched his effort up, over the wall and down into the top corner of the net, leaving Hugo Souza flat-footed and stranded as he crabbed across his line.

“I mean, good goal, good goal,” he told Channel 10 immediately after full time.

“It felt good. You see there, beautiful.”

Fair enough too, it was enough to get everyone up and dancing in Townsville, and as far flung as Portugal, where his Sporting team described it as

“I sit next to him on the bus and he hasn’t stopped watching it,” Yengi said when asked if Irankunda had been replaying the moment.

“Great, amazing goal.

“We need moments like this in our games if you want to win.”

A moment of genuine class.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Corinthians keeper Souza also hailed the effort.

“I think the guy [Irankunda] caught that free-kick brilliantly. By the time I thought about diving, the ball had already gone past,” he told Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo.

“It’s obvious the criticism is going to come: ‘He didn’t dive for it, I think he could have reached it, I think it was a mistake, I don’t think it was a mistake…’ That will happen with any goal that I or any other goalkeeper concedes here for the national team.

“It comes with the territory, with the magnitude of the shirt we wear, and it’s natural that these kinds of narratives and opinions will emerge.”

The stadium is doing its best to warm the crowd up with a big display of flame throwers and fireworks just before the teams are announced.

All the players are getting a superb reception.

When the Brazil team came out for their warm up, their reception was euphoric.

As they just ran down the tunnel, the reception was just as impressive.

There are an awful lot of Brazil fans here in the stadium – and they are looking forward to seeing their heroes.

Part of watching football is about getting over-excited.

Part of being excited by the sport is getting over-enthused and wildly ahead of ones self at the slightest provocation.

We’re all guilty of it.

But I am going to stand by the reaction that I had when Nestory Irankunda scored that remarkable free kick on Friday night.

It capped a superb performance from the young Sporting star, and you can relive it right here.

The “safe option” is no longer the best option for the Socceroos, who will push the envelope in tonight’s Brazil rematch.

Alessandro Circati said the fact that a number of Socceroos had made the move to play in Europe’s biggest leagues; Circati to Benfica, Nestory Irankuna to Sporting, Lucas Herrington to Hull and goalkeeper Patrick Beach to Troyes, had changed the outlook.

“For sure, something’s changed,” Circati said.

“We’ve all gone to bigger clubs, so it’s normal that you know you’re a bit more confident.

“It can be linked, but … the boss did specify what he wanted from us, and we just had to put that on show. It all starts from him.”

Circati also detailed a significant mindset shift within a team that was criticised in some quarters for being too defensive at the World Cup.

“Play out a little bit more,” he said.

“Be a bit more brave, breaking their press, and you know maybe risking a pass more instead of just playing that safe option,” he said of coach Tony Popovic’s instruction.

More of that tonight, please, Socceroos.

– with AAP

Carlo Ancelotti and Bruno Guimarães both criticised the pitch in Townsville, noting that it was hard to play football on.

And they had good reason, too.

The turf cut up and rolled like a poorly fitted carpet on Friday night – it makes you wonder whether top level teams will want to risk their highly valued stars on such a surface in the future had they watched that play out.

Will things be better at Lang Park?

Well… I was fortunate to be pitch side for the Wallabies’ last match here against France a couple of months ago and, I’m afraid to say, it sucked.

Looking down at the verdant carpet from our level four press box I can safely say that the grass looks green, with a problematic patch at the Milton Road end of the ground a different shade of green and a bit of a worry based on what players told me after that Wallabies game.

There’s not been a huge volume of traffic on here since the end of the NRL season, with the Broncos sinking without a trace, so  perhaps that’s given it the time to settle?

We’ll find out, I guess.

As for the kit?

It’s the Aussies who are in green and gold tonight, with the Brazilians in blue.

Carlo Ancelotti spoke last night in Brisbane at a forum, where the veteran Italian coach responded to some of the criticism (and there was plenty) about Brazil’s performance.

Needless to say, it’s water off a ducks back.

“It’s good to have criticism of the work,” said Ancelotti.

“Criticism has always existed and always will. It doesn’t affect the idea I have for the future of this national team.

“Criticism has zero effect on what I think about the future.”

Ancelotti has picked a largely experimental squad, with 17 of the 26-player squad having 10 or fewer caps as well as 10 uncapped players.

“The first game, the result is not so important for us,” Ancelotti said.

“We are looking for other things: to give space and opportunity to the young players, to the new players. So, in this aspect, it was a good game.

“We could play better, of course; we could play better. But you also have to take into consideration the quality of the opponent.

“Australia did really well. They defended really well. They are really compact. It’s difficult to find space. All these kinds of things. The pitch didn’t help us, but Australia didn’t help us either.”

Ancelotti is the only coach to have won each of Europe’s five major leagues, and is a five-time Champions League winning coach, which is also a record.

He will not let a disappointing performance away from home in a friendly match.

He did however hint at changes for tonight’s game.

“Our priority [is] I would like to better know my players, to have a clear idea when I’m going to choose the squad for the official competitions.

“I don’t want to [make] mistakes.”

It wasn’t just the Brazilian press with the knives out after the Townsville draw.

With Carlo Ancelotti’s close ties with Real Madrid in Spain, the local press there are always going to be keen to keen an eye on how he’s doing – especially with Barcelona making such a good start to La Liga season.

Spanish paper Marca said Ancelotti “still has a lot of work ahead of him” to change Brazil, saying that the team lacked creativity and tactical organization.

Another Spanish agency, AS said although Ancelotti managed to avoid a “disaster,” Brazil’s traditional “beautiful game” is a thing of the past and needs to be completely reinvented.

The scathing analysis of the Brazilian public to the 1-1 draw on Friday makes for quite entertaining reading.

Brazilian broadcasting giant Globo has a rating platform on their website, where the public can give a score out of 10 for a players performance – a pretty common aspect of South American and European football reporting.

The numbers are pretty bad.

Vinícius Júnior was particularly brutally treated by the public, which gave him a score of 1.7. Globo, which gave him 5.0, said “He made relatively simple mistakes and produced little.”

Highlights can always be cut to make people look bad, but these do tell a story…

Only one person involved with the game was scored lower than Viní Jr, his coach Carlos Ancelotti.

Ancelotti was given a score of just 1.4 by the public, and 4.5 by Globo, who criticised his 4-2-4 formation as being flawed.

Rayan, who scored the goal, was given a score of 6.6 by the public and 7.0 by Globo – one of just three players to score more than 5.0 in the public vote.

Other notable public scores were 2.3 for goalkeeper Hugo Souza, 2.5’s for the “below average” Bruno Guimarães and Raphinha, while 2.8 was Douglas Santos‘s score.

Globo’s reporter Cahê Mota noted that Brazil repeated many of the same mistakes that plagued their poor World Cup showing in the first game in Townsville.

“The poor performance in the draw against Australia leaves more questions than certainties for the national team at the start of this cycle leading up to 2030,” he wrote, saying that the challenge Carlo Ancelotti faces goes well beyond a renewal of the squad.

“The gaps in midfield remain an obvious weakness. Danilo Santos (3.9 public score) and Bruno Guimarães (2.5 public score) were overwhelmed both in and out of possession, forced to drop deep during the build-up and cover vast amounts of space against Australia’s attacks,” Mota added.

Now you mention it, Mike, I do like surprises.

I’m not sure Carlo Ancelotti does though… and judging by what I read in the Brazilian press over the last few days, neither do the Brazil fans…

Brazil were only saved by a last-second header from Rayan in Townsville on Friday.

Carlo Ancelotti said post-match that the draw was “deserved” and that Brazil did well on what was a pretty poor pitch (which it was).

“It doesn’t taste like a defeat because it’s a draw,” Ancelotti said.

“We could have won, we had chances.

“It was difficult to play on this pitch.

“We responded after conceding and secured a deserved draw.

“These are tests we have to run, handing out opportunities and moving forward.

“It was a test. The next one will be another test.

“This isn’t the start of a cycle, it’s a continuation. The priority is to give minutes to those who play less, young players with potential like Endrick and Estêvão.”

Ancelotti added that friendlies were designed to allow coaches to test things out ahead of more important tests ahead.

“The fans need to be patient,” he said.

“When official competitions arrive, we will be ready.

[The game] Some positive aspects… We had the chance to take the lead; we just lacked precision in the final third. The team fought until the end, didn’t want to lose, and didn’t lose.”

As much as everyone is expecting Brazil to bounce back in Brisbane this evening, Socceroos striker Tete Yengi reckons Australia can raise their game as well.

“They have that winning mentality, that fight and they’re going to step it up again,” Yengi said.

“So we have to be ready. We have to match that, and we also believe that we can be better too.

“So yeah, we’re going to show that.”

It’s probably fair to say that Yengi only started in Townsville due to the injury suffered by in-form Mohamed Touré, whose sublime scoring record for Norwich put him right in the frame before he dislocated his shoulder.

But Yengi has been good for J-League side Machida Zelvia too, with two goals and an assist in eight matches for the Tokyo-based side.

“I’m a bit different to what we have,” he said of his ability to hold the ball up.

“The boss has put a lot of lot of faith in me.

“I love opportunities like this where I have to step up. That’s my nature. That’s my game.”

– with AAP

Aziz Behich may be the only A-League-based star in the Socceroos camp.

He may be, at 35 years old, the veteran of the team.

He was also the only player on the pitch in Townsville to have not played a game since the World Cup, owing to the A-League’s absurdly long offseason.

But you wouldn’t have known it as the Melbourne City fullback tore up and down the flank as the Socceroos laid down a marker against the world’s fifth-ranked side.

But with age and experience comes the knowledge that Brazil are unlikely to be caught napping twice in a row.

“We’ve set the bar high for ourselves … it was good, but we need to be better,” Behich said.

Read more from the Socceroos camp here.

Can’t help but feel the official stadium name would rhyme better there…

But anyway.

All tickets sold for tonight’s game – is there anything better than a packed house in Brisbane?

This time last year, Lucas Herrington called Lang Park his home ground.

The teenager was playing for the Brisbane Roar, having come through the youth set up at Brisbane City after playing junior football at Taringa Rovers and Toowong.

Fast forward a year and the now 19-year-old has played in the USA for Colorado, for the Socceroos in a World Cup, and in the Premier League for Hull City.

It’s been a whirlwind adventure for the softly spoken Socceroo, whose calm and composed demeanour on the pitch is what separates him from the rest.

Herrington was very good against Brazil in Townsville, not making a single tackle but made two shot blocks, two interceptions and four clearances — something that says a lot more about his ability to read a game than anything else.

Now, in front of the same friends and family who may have watched him play at Jack Speare Park in Indooroopilly, he’ll be playing for the Socceroos at a sold out Lang Park — as long as they got tickets.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to represent the Socceroos in Brisbane, so I can’t wait.” Herrington said.

Dreams can come true, something all Brisbane junior players should bare in mind.