Al Ain: Graham Arnold will wait until the morning of his side’s meeting with the United Arab Emirates before deciding on his starting lineup as defending champions Australia set their sights on a place in the semi-finals of the AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019 on Friday.



Arnold will break from his usual practice of informing his players ahead of their final training session to give himself and his coaching staff more time to make an assessment of his team in the aftermath of their penalty shootout win over Uzbekistan in the Round of 16.

The Central Asian side pushed the Socceroos to the limits in their meeting in Al Ain on Monday, with goalkeeper Maty Ryan emerging as the hero for Australia as the country progressed to the quarter-finals for the third tournament in a row.







“We’ve recovered very well from the performance against Uzbekistan - the extra time and the penalty shootout - and the boys are in fantastic headspace,” said Arnold. “Probably playing those extra minutes has built a lot of confidence and belief within the group. When we look back at that performance, we know there’s a lot of improvement left in us and I expect a great performance tomorrow night.

“Normally I name the team the night - or the last training session – before, but for this one I decided not to. It’s really around the side of recovery. We only played three days ago and I want to see the fresh players training today and I want to see the mentality and the freshness and I’ll make the decision on the line-up tomorrow morning.”

 


Round of 16: Australia vs Uzbekistan

Tom Rogic will miss the game due to suspension but, with Mathew Leckie now fully recovered from a hamstring injury and Andrew Nabbout declaring himself fit, Arnold now has a squad that is close to full strength available going into the game against the tournament hosts.

The game will be the fourth time in five games at this year’s AFC Asian Cup that the Socceroos will have faced off against a side from West Asia and Arnold believes the earlier meetings with Jordan, Syria and Palestine will have helped prepare his team for the clash at Hazza bin Zayed Stadium.

“Uzbekistan played more of a European style game, I think the experience of playing against Syria and Palestine is more close to the UAE,” he said. “We are learning a lot every game. UAE are the home nation and we respect the UAE but we will play our way, in our style and expect to dominate the game.

“We’ve done our homework on them and no doubt they’ve done their homework on us. We have a lot of belief in our group. We work a lot with the players mentally to get that advantage over the opposition.”

And Arnold believes a partisan home crowd is just as likely to put pressure on the tournament hosts as it is to intimidate his players when they meet on Friday evening.

“A full stadium for the UAE can work two ways,” he said. “It can work to help or it can work the opposite way and put a lot of pressure on them because they’re the home nation. That has nothing to do with us. All we can do is prepare ourselves properly and get ourselves ready.”


Source: the-afc.com