Australia prepare for the World Cup 2018 competition

Australia prepare for the World Cup 2018 competition by being involved in the qualifying match against Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday night.

However, there is a danger of the national team not performing well due to concerns about the pitch. After having been used to good quality pitches in Australia and across the world, Australian players will have to play on a vastly inferior surface against Kyrgyzstan. Manager Ange Postecoglou, though, has stated that this will not be considered as an excuse for not getting a good result. After a rather disappointing World Cup 2014, Australia need to do well in the upcoming tournament.

The team had a positive Asian cup tournament after managing to beat Korea and win the title after extra time. Australia have had inexperience of a bumpy pitch only recently after being involved in a friendly against Macedonia away from home back in March. The game finished as a 0-0 draw and a similar sort of result is expected from the nation’s opening World Cup 2018 qualifying match. Australia are expected to breeze through the group, which contains the likes of Jordan and Bangladesh aside from the socceroos. Postecoglou’s primary job was to integrate some of the new players into the team and he appears to have done this in a good manner.

"We've made some progress there, for sure. Even the new ones that come in get indoctrinated pretty quickly by the other boys. We've got a pretty comfortable setup. I never want them to be too comfortable, because it's not a club side. And as I keep telling them, the next game isn't for a couple of months and there's no guarantees they'll be part of that. We'll have another look at the pitch and have a run on it, but it is what it is. We'll deal with what we need to deal with,” said the manager.