Socceroos’ World Cup squad is one of their youngest ever. It might be their best since 2010

Oakland: The Socceroos have set up their World Cup base camp in the land of the driverless car.

Oakland, California – their home away from home for the next few weeks – sits on the edge of Silicon Valley, across the bay from where the world’s biggest technology companies spend billions chasing the future, investing in ideas before their time.

Australia’s own future starts here and now.

Tony Popovic’s 26-man squad is, at an average age of 26.8, the second-youngest Australia has taken to the tournament. This team is built not only for this World Cup, but the next one – and the one after that, too.

In terms of quality, a strong argument could be made that, man for man, this is as good a group of players as the Socceroos have had at a World Cup since 2010 – a potent blend of battle-hardened professionals and high-upside young talent, though without the household names of that era.

It’s instructive that the last four players eliminated from Popovic’s squad selection puzzle had all been overtaken by younger rivals, who have only emerged as contenders in the last six to eight months – reflecting the broader, deeper talent pool of young Australian players funnelling through the A-League and now making an impact across Europe and beyond.

Martin Boyle, 33, is the unfortunate victim of Cristian Volpato’s decision to finally declare for Australia – and Popovic’s decision, in turn, to bring the 22-year-old livewire straight into camp to debut at a World Cup.

Brandon Borrello, 30, has been bested by a younger, taller striker in Tete Yengi, 25, possibly marking an end to his international football career.

Kye Rowles, 27, started in all of Australia’s games at the last World Cup but has been bumped down the pecking order by Lucas Herrington, an 18-year-old who plays like he’s been around forever.

Even Joe Gauci, 25, who would still think of himself as a young player, has been shaded by Patrick Beach, a goalkeeper three years his junior at 22.

Then there are Nestory Irankunda, 20, and Mohamed Toure, 21, both the kind of dynamic forwards that Socceroos fans have long dreamed about.

Behind them, there is Alessandro Circati, 22, a current Serie A star in the heart of defence, plus Paul Okon jnr, a 21-year-old chip off the old block, while, overlapping on the left, there’s Jordan Bos, a 23-year-old Gareth Bale clone who breezes past opponents.

For the first time at a World Cup, it feels like all possibilities are in play for the Socceroos. That’s partly because they have landed in an incredibly even Group D – in which Australia, the United States, Turkey and Paraguay will all rightly feel capable of beating each other – and partly because, with so many players on an upwards trajectory, nobody knows where their ceiling is.

But the defining question hanging over Australia’s campaign can’t be answered until it begins: what if this World Cup has arrived slightly too soon for this new generation?

Popovic, with his recent rhetoric about “resilience and mentality” and knowing how to “suffer” in football, appears to share that concern – which is why, for this team, the chance to face World Cup co-hosts Mexico in front of nearly 80,000 fans at the Rose Bowl on the weekend was so priceless.

Speaking after Australia’s 1-0 defeat, Popovic admitted his players lacked the “maturity” required to handle those sort of occasions, since so many of them had not been exposed to occasions like it.

The next day, as he unveiled his squad, he spoke of his own experience: how the ‘golden generation’ were soundly beaten in World Cup qualifying against Uruguay, four years before they turned the tables and broke Australia’s 32-year drought.

“We had an eight to 10-year cycle. We lost against Uruguay and were really bullied in the second leg,” Popovic said. “That same group played four years later and didn’t get bullied. That’s maturity. That’s maybe another 100 to 200 league games under your belt at the highest level, so you can handle those occasions better.

“We weren’t poor players four years earlier. We were very good players. We were a great group. Four years later, we were much better.”

Is that how it will be with this group? Can they absorb these lessons quickly enough to be ready to compete at the required level from the first whistle, without first feeling overawed?

Or are they actually ready, today? Where is the rule that says they have to wait? Why can’t this be the group that goes further than any other Socceroos team, as Popovic has been pondering out loud of late?

The worst-case scenario is that the class of 2026 will be remembered like Brazil 2014: when Ange Postecoglou, thrown into the job only eight months prior, put that golden generation out to pasture and quickly rebuilt the team from the ground up. That was our youngest squad.

They lost all three games, but were widely praised for the way they went about their football, and managed to lay the foundations for Asian Cup success the following year.

The next month will reveal whether these Socceroos are merely building towards something bigger in the future, like them – or whether they are capable of becoming it now.

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