Australia’s hopes of a direct path to the FIFA World Cup went up in smoke on Wednesday night, as a pair of late goals to Japan consigned the hosts to the play-off route.
Aside from a few spirited moments and one controversially disallowed goal, Australia was second-best throughout, as Japan routinely pinched the ball in midfield and sprung through in transition.
Takumi Minamino fired the first warning shot, forcing a save from Mat Ryan within 40 seconds, and on another day could legitimately have scored three or four goals, hitting the woodwork twice and going close on a number of other occasions.
AS IT HAPPENED: Australia v Japan, World Cup qualifiers
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Instead, it was left to substitute Kaoru Mitoma to prod home a late winner, before adding a second in stoppage time.
A draw was not going to be enough for Australia regardless, so the late winner only hurts in as much as it means that the mathematical chance of a Saudi Arabia loss to China or a Japan loss to Vietnam are gone. But neither was realistic, anyway.
Regardless of everything else, Australia could well have taken a lead into the break, only for an own goal to be disallowed very softly.
The ball was swung in from the left and over the top of both Trent Sainsbury and goalkeeper Shuichi Gonda, and under the pressure of Gianni Stensness, defender Miki Yamane headed it into his own net, only for referee Nawaf Shukralla to rule it out for an alleged foul on the Japanese keeper.
“I haven’t seen it back and there’s quite a few texts saying it was contentious and 50-50,” Socceroos coach Graham Arnold said post-match.
“At the end of the day, we haven’t seemed to have got many of these decisions in this campaign.”
It does mean that alarms won’t have to be set for that game against Saudi Arabia at 5am (AEDT) next week. No matter the result, Australia will finish third in the group.
This means the Socceroos will face the third-placed team in the other Asian group, which will be one of Lebanon, Iraq or UAE. If they win that one-off sudden-death game in June, they’ll play the fifth-placed team in South America a week later.
That will be one of Uruguay, Chile, Colombia or Peru.
The 41,852 was a very healthy crowd, but it’s a far cry from the glory days of 2005 and beyond – and given the on-pitch product, we may never get back to that level.
Ajdin Hrustic tried hard in a beaten side but a combination of tactics and unavailable players meant the Socceroos were always going to be second-best.
“We played a very defensive team in Japan and we didn’t get the result we wanted,” Arnold said.
“The effort was fantastic but tying up third place and having that play-off like we did in 2018… it’s always difficult to qualify for a World Cup.
“We’ve got to brush ourselves off and we’ll learn a lot from tonight.”
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