Joey LynchCloseJoey Lynch is a Melbourne-based sports journalist and AYA cancer advocate. Primarily working on football, he has covered the Socceroos, Matildas and A-Leagues for ESPN for over a decade.
VANCOUVER -- Australia already knew it, and now, so does the rest of the world: You write the Socceroos off at your own peril. They will bend, but they will not break. You will have to earn every look at the goal, no matter how glancing. No matter how on top of the game you feel, you can never afford to turn off for a moment. Men at Work's seminal track Down Under will be belted out by a boisterous Australian crowd. Oh and Nestory Irankunda is going to the moon.
Examining the stat sheet of the Socceroos 2-0 win over Türkiye on Saturday evening would tell you that this was an absolute smash-and-grab. And, yes, in all honesty, it was. But that would lose the nuance; overlook that this was a carefully orchestrated heist, one carefully planned by coach Tony Popovic and executed by his players with a level of unyielding commitment and dedication.
Defending as though their lives depended on it, every single shot of the 30 that the Turks fashioned at BC Place felt like it was contested, every move into the box converged upon by a sea of green-and-gold shirts, and no cause was too hopeless to chase, nor wasn't any ball worth hurling bodies in front of. Sure, Türkiye controlled possession, fielded the likes of Arda Güler and Hakan Çalhanoglu -- and brought Kenan Yildiz on at halftime -- but they never dominated. Because dominating would imply there was a moment where they were dictating terms to the Australians, and never once did it feel like the Socceroos were helpless, simply waiting for their opponents to deliver a telling blow.
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And when this didn't prove enough, when one of Türkiye's attempts, which, for all their volume, only produced 1.33 expected goals, Patrick Beach was there.
The Melbourne City goalkeeper was one of two gigantic selection gambles that Popovic swung with his starting XI, tapped to play over captain and 104-cap veteran Mathew Ryan. It was the kind of call that could not only have defined Popovic's tenure but also Beach's career. It might just have done the latter. In just his third international appearance -- his first-ever competitive one -- Beach produced a series of huge saves to maintain a clean sheet. Be it denying a wicked Güler volley, making a fingertip save to deny a long-range howitzer from Abdülkerim Bardakçi, seeing off Zeki Çelik when he was clean in on the near post in the 72nd minute, or blocking a Kerem Aktürkoglu volley six minutes later, Beach stood up to be counted.
Across the 90 minutes, it felt like Beach underwent the kind of development that would normally take years. Banishing early nerves, every save and every moment that he made saw him grow in stature, assuming a No. 1 role that for years had been assumed by Ryan and making it his own. Could it all come crashing down next week, if Folarin Balogun has his way? Maybe. But nobody will be able to take this game off him.
As there always is, there were narratives beyond this, too. Popovic showing his nerves of steel, for instance, in opting to bench his skipper in Ryan and deputy skipper in Jackson Irvine to replace them with Beach and Paul Okon Jr, who entered with a combined zero international competitive fixtures between them and completely validated their coach's faith -- Okon Jr was perhaps Australia's best player, tirelessly working in the middle, in the first half.
The young duo formed only a part of a night that will go down in Socceroos lore. The hydration break -- or quarter-time -- served as a major weapon for the Socceroos, with Irankunda delivering their lead just five minutes after it was observed. There was Connor Metcalfe, one of the most unheralded members of the squad, but who is so important to what Popovic wants to achieve, hammering home a sealer to get his moment in the sun. There was also Çalhanoğlu, being forced to eat his words after declaring the day prior that his side would "dominate" Australia because of their superior quality.
And then there was Irankunda. Running onto a superbly placed ball from Okon Jr in the 27th minute, moments after Beach denied Güler's volley, the attacker rounded Merih Demiral, kept his footing to see off Ismail Yüksek, and then drilled an effort into the bottom corner just before the half-hour.
It was an important goal, swinging the game state towards the advantage of the Socceroos, and also a wickedly executed one, as they moved the ball rapidly up the field before Irankunda showed poise beyond his years to finish. But it was also a symbolic one.
For years, the Socceroos have almost existed in the shadow of Tim Cahill, searching to find a player who can not only provide the goals that the legendary figure once did, but also the force of personality to propel them into the mainstream. They've had heroes and dedicated servants, but they haven't had that player, like a Cahill or a Sam Kerr, who generates instant name recognition and demands the back page.
Perhaps now, though, they do. For when the 20-year-old barrel rolled towards the corner flag before getting to his feet and shadow boxing the corner flag, there wasn't just an explosion of emotion taking place around BC Place, but also a passing of the torch. On the grandest stage of them all, eight years after Cahill's retirement, Irankunda scored the goal that saw him crowned the new prince of Australian football. The prince that was promised.
Indeed, while it will no doubt quickly be consumed by the wave of hype to descend upon what is now a top-of-the-group clash between the Socceroos and United States in Seattle next Friday, this was probably one of the best World Cup wins in the team's history. Quarterfinalists at the last European championships, the Turks had come into this tournament possessing arguably the best on-paper squad in Group D. Whereas the combined value of the entire Australian squad would have struggled to push €100 million -- albeit Barcelona's reported interest in Lucas Herrington might change that soon -- Türkiye fielded not one, but two prodigies in Güler and Yıldız that are worth more than that on their own, as well one of the world's most respected midfielders in Çalhanoğlu.
Further, opening day disappointment had become something of an unwelcome routine for the Socceroos; the famous 3-1 win over Japan in Kaiserslautern back in 2006 serving as the lone exception to what has otherwise proven to be a morose sea of defeat heading into Saturday.
But now that feels almost apt. Because just as Cahill did on that day two decades ago, delivering Australia a momentous win over the Samurai Blue before boxing the corner flag, Irankunda has now lifted the Socceroos to another famous win, before giving the corner flag a left-right of his own.
History doesn't repeat. But it just might rhyme.
Source: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49058502/arise-irankunda-australia-new-prince-socceroos-shock-turkiye