I Told You So

The Totally Unbiased Review of Turkey vs Australia. And why I was right.

In the immortal words of the great Johnny Warren, I told you so.

I said Australia would beat Turkey.¹ And we did.

I said Nestory Irankunda would be labelled our next Tim Cahill. And he was.

I said Nestory Irankunda would announce himself on the world stage. And SBS commentator David Basheer said those exact words after Irankunda scored.²

I said we would win 3-0 and if Harry Souttar’s 54th minute header went ten centimetres more to the left, my post-match gloating would be even more more gargantuan.

I did say Nestory Irankunda was most likely to get a red card, but in my defence, that was a joke which was only there to make fun of the fact that living in Adelaide turns people into lunatics with very little impulse control. And I was right about that. (Ask any away fan who has ever made the perilous journey across the footbridge after a footy match against the Adelaide Crows or Port Power).³

But there was something I did not get right.

The good news is our goalkeeper Mat Ryan is a genuinely great shot stopper. This year in La Liga, he kept nine clean sheets and made 125 saves, playing for Levante.

When our team was announced, Mat Ryan was not there. The player named as our goalkeeper was Patrick Beach. Our third goalkeeper. The back-up to the back-up. The guy who only plays if the other two goalies crash into each other in the warm-up and knock each other out.

In 2024 I watched Patrick Beach play his second match for Melbourne City, against Melbourne Victory in the Melbourne Derby. He let through three goals in the first 25 minutes. The first two were tough chances, but the third was an absolute howler, when Beach tried to play out, but gave the ball away to Ryan Teague, who scored the easiest of goals.

That night Victory won 3-1, and I wasn’t sure if we’d see Beach play for Melbourne City again, let alone line up against Turkey in a World Cup. Turkey, a team with 8 players in their starting line-up who’d played Champions League. Turkey, a team who unleash more long range thunderbolts than a really pissed off Greek God. Turkey, a team who’d missed out on the World Cup for the last twenty years, and were ready to curb stomp the first unlucky country who got in their way.

On top of that, every Australian fan remembers what happened the last time a coach inexplicably replaced a much-loved keeper at a World Cup. In 2006, Guus Hiddink replaced Mark Schwarzer with Zeljko Kalac for the final group match against Croatia, and Kalac let through a goal that a suburban player would have been dragged for. I can still see that ball bobble into the net, as a forlorn Simon Hill lamented, “And Big Spider has made a big mistake.”⁴ ⁵ ⁶

Now, twenty years later, we had to wonder, had Big Poppa made a big mistake?

But Tony Popovich did not stop there with his brass ball calls. He also left out Jackson Irvine. The guy who captains the team if Mat Ryan isn’t there. So now we had two captains sitting on the bench. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one captain is a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.

Finding out Jackson Irvine is out of the team, is like rocking up to your favourite hipster cafe and the barista who’s made your coffee every morning is no longer at the coffee machine, and is out the back washing dishes. It leads to a lot of questions like, “Is he coming back?”, “What did he do wrong?”, and “Who’s going to make my double shot almond latte with a picture of my own face drawn in the milk?”⁷

Irvine was replaced by Paul Okon-Engstler, a 21 year old who’d played a handful of games for the Socceroos, and who normally plays for Sydney FC. So now we were down two captains from La Liga and Bundesliga, replaced by two players from a league that begins the grand final every year by driving the ball onto the field in a remote controlled car.⁸

There were so many questions, the main one being: “Tony, what the fuck?”

I wanted to sit Tony down, and ask him, like Woody Harrelson in No Country for Old Men, “Do you have any idea how crazy you are?”

These are the kind of coaching calls that if they backfire, cause Craig Foster to start foaming at the mouth, and calling for former captains to storm the change room and physically remove the coach.

Other less seismic, but still fairly brassy calls, were Cameron Burgess at the back over Lucas Herrington⁹ ¹⁰, and Nestory Irankunda starting up front, which was the right call because as I’ve already explained, Nestory Irankunda is going to win the golden boot.

The match starts, and Australia goes full Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle.¹¹ It’s the rope a dope, as we lay back, absorb the punishment and wait for Turkey to tire themselves out and drop their guard. But when will a team like Turkey, with eight champions league players, drop their guard?

The answer is 26 minutes. Patrick Beach saves a low shot from Yilmaz, springs to his feet and confidently throws to Cam Burgess, who passes to Okon-Engstler, who plays a glorious long ball¹² to Nestory Irankunda, who pounces on it like a greyhound catching a lure, and scores. And Australia goes berserk.

The whole thing takes 13 seconds. And the players that in that passage - Beach, Burgess, Okon-Engstler and Irankunda - were the four players that Tony Popovic bought into that starting line-up.

Now Turkey are really pissed off. Four minutes later, Turkey’s Bardakci unleashes a lethal shot from outside the box¹³, and Patrick Beach dives to his right, and with arms fully outstretched, makes one of the greatest saves you’ll ever witness.

Forgive me Tony. I was blind, but now I see.

As the second half begins, the post Irankunda euphoria fades and been replaced by simmering anxiety (Socceroos fans who grew up in the eighties and nineties have very every right to remain vigilant against hope). Australia don’t just park the bus, we park a whole fleet of buses across the box, with Harry Souttar as the double decker in the middle. When Turkey can’t get through the bus depot, they start blasting shots from outside the box, and we defend like an elite military unit under a brutal assault. But how long could this last?

At 75 minutes there’s another lapse from Turkey. Connor Metcalfe surges forward and scores from outside the box. He celebrates with one of the greatest ever knee slides in the history of football - The graceful run, the perfect launch, the elegant slide like a swan landing on a perfectly still lake, the lean backwards at about 180 degress, both arms wide open to the sky, and then landing in the waiting arms of his jubilant teammates. No Notes.

If FIFA gave out a “Golden Knee Slide” trophy, you could hand it to Connor Metcalfe right now. I am 47 and if I attempted that, my thigh muscles would tear clean off the bone, and my kneecaps would launch off my legs and take out fans in the front row.

We win the match 2-0. Patrick Beach finishes with a clean sheet and eight saves, the most of any Australia keeper at a World Cup, and the most of any keeper on debut at the World Cup since 2002.¹⁴

I never doubted for a second.

I told you so.

Soundtrack for the match: Big Poppa - The Notorious B.I.G.

In honour of Tony Popovich and his bold selection calls, throw your hands in the air, for a true player.

1. If you don’t think that I’m petty enough to screengrab every tweet, facebook comment, and reddit post that told me I was an idiot/to please kill myself for predicting Australia would win, then you have drastically underestimated me, and my ability to hold grudges against anonymous internet trolls.

2. Yes, Basheer said “global” stage, not “world” stage, but I will not be accepting any nit-picking at this time.

3. My friend Mick went to the first ever AFL match in Adelaide in 1991, when Adelaide beat Hawthorn by 86 points. As Mick was leaving the match, he saw a group of Adelaide fans trying to set the Hawthorn cheer squad bus on fire, with the Hawthorn cheer squad inside it. And Adelaide won. By 86 points. That’s how they celebrate in Adelaide.

4. Spider was Kalac’s nickname, due to his 2.02 metre height which, is actually 6 centremetres taller than Harry Souttar. Although that night against Croatia he kept like Itsy Bitsy Spider.

5. Simon Hill often did these repetitions when he got emotional in the commentary box. EG: “Big Spider has made a big mistake”, “It’s a wonder goal from the wonder boy of Australian football”, and “It’s a save that means the world to Australia, it’s a save that means the world cup for Australia.” I’ve always wanted to ask him if it was a deliberate phrasing that he used, or more of an unconcious thing that happened when he got excited. I’d also like to ask him what it was like to spend the whole of the 2005 Ashes in the SBS studio with Dean Jones and Greg Matthews. (Sadly it was pre-youtube, so I can’t find any footage, or even a photo, but it is still one of the all time great studio teams)

6. After a passionate defence of Big Spider from reader Matthew Saxon I do need to qualify that Zlejko Kalac was actually a great keeper, who was reserve keeper for AC Milan. And it has since been revealed he had a back injury that night. It arguably wasn’t the biggest cock-up in the match. That award goes to the English refereee Graham Poll who gave two yellows cards to Josip Simunic, but failed to send him. Finally sending him off in the last mintue when Simunic got a third yellow card.

7. A barista did this for me in Indonesia once. Although the picture made me look like a detective in a French murder mystery.

8. Just for the record, I absolutely love the A-League, and take my kids most weeks. Aside from the Melbourne Derby because the Victory fans behind the goals terrify me.

9. I was also right about this.

10. Barcelona apparently offered 1,000,000 dollars for Lucas Herrington which would have made him the first Australian ever recruited by the Barcelona senior team. His team Colorado said no, probably because they know one million dollars is what Barcelona keep in the loose change jar on Hansi Flick’s desk.

11. I really wanted to find a version for this match, but the best I could come up with was the “Manuever in Vancouver”

12. With this beautiful pass, Okon-Engstler goes straight into the Australian long ball assist at the World Cup Hall of Fame. He joins Riley McGree who played a beautifully weighted pass to set-up Mat Leckie against Denmark in 2022, and Ryan McGowan, the often forgotten player who’s raking pass set up Tim Cahill for his wonder strike against the Netherlands in 2014.

13. I was also right that Turkey would revert to banging them in from outside the box.

14. Ironically, it’s the best performance by a keeper on debut since Turkish keeper Rüştü Reçber made nine saves against Brazil in 2002.