San Francisco: Former United States international Alexi Lalas says the Socceroos should be grateful they are being dismissed as a threat to the World Cup co-hosts, urging Tony Popovic to print out his comments and stick them on the walls of the team’s dressing room.
“I hope that they print it out. Make sure you spell my name correctly,” Lalas said.
“I hope that it’s wallpaper all around the Australian dressing room, because they’re going to need all the help they can get.”
Lalas is one of several American soccer pundits who could not hide his glee when the Socceroos landed in group D alongside the USA for the World Cup. As the lowest-ranked team in pot two – which also featured the likes of Croatia, Morocco, Colombia and Japan – Australia was statistically the best possible opponent for the co-hosts.
The celebrations began almost instantly ahead of their showdown on June 20 (AEST) in Seattle.
Mike Grella, an American ex-player turned analyst for CBS Sports, described the Socceroos as a “lay-up”, as if a basketball term was the optimal way to assert his country’s supremacy in soccer.
That was in December. Just last month he struggled to defend his position during an on-air grilling from Mark Schwarzer, and then said if the USA couldn’t beat Australia, they shouldn’t be at the World Cup.
On Fox Sports, Lalas looked up to the heavens with gratitude on the night of the draw: “If you believe in the soccer gods, you should be thanking them. This is not just a good group, this is a great group. This is a group you should expect this United States team to win.”
This week, Lalas went hard and direct at the Socceroos, who he has rated 36th out of the 48 teams at the World Cup in his personal power rankings.
“They’re going to struggle to score goals, to maintain possession … against better quality competition and the elites of the world, they can’t play the way they play in their region,” Lalas said on the State of the Union podcast.
“This is an average team by any measure, and certainly not a great team.”
Best known as the long-haired, ginger-bearded centre-back for the USA during their last World Cup at home in 1994, Lalas the pundit has become one of the defining personalities of American soccer, famously unafraid to say what he thinks, whenever he wants. He is a proud MAGA advocate and engages in rolling social media battles with just about anyone willing to take him on.
So, yeah … he’s not backing down on this one.
“I don’t have to defend myself,” Lalas said.
“Because the one thing that I’ve learned from travelling to Australia is, while you are a mighty and proud nation, you’re also a realistic nation, and a nation of truth. There is total truth in what I said.
“If you put it up certainly against groups that we have had in the past, this is, like I said, not just an easier group – and I know you use that, and that’s a triggering type of word – but I think it’s a winnable group for a number of different reasons.”
One of those reasons is the advantage of being a host nation. Lalas travelled to Australia for the 2023 Women’s World Cup in his capacity as a “FIFA Legend” and saw first-hand how the Matildas rose on the back of an unprecedented wave of support.
“If you piss it away, it’s on you. Hopefully these guys don’t do that,” he said.
Lalas considers Australia and the USA to be “kindred spirits” in soccer because of the sport’s domestic outsider status in both countries, and promises anyone coming to visit for the tournament that they will have a “kick-ass time”.
If anything, Lalas reckons, he’s doing us a favour by talking his country up, and the Socceroos down.
For him, it’s actually “necessary” to demand more from the world No.16-ranked Americans. They have gone past the World Cup’s round of 16 once, in 2002, but the game is booming in America: their squad is filled with top-level quality and experience, and their coach is the famed Mauricio Pochettino. Lalas admitted there would be no valid excuses if this squad could not go on the USA’s deepest World Cup run yet.
“The [USA] group that your Australian team is going to face has been given everything that they ever have wanted from a very young age, and I am incredibly proud of that,” Lalas said.
“I’m like a proud parent that has made it better for the kids – but with that comes higher expectations and a responsibility to live up to what I feel are fair expectations. I wouldn’t put it on this group if I didn’t think that they could.
“But it puts you guys in a good position, by the way. I’m helping you out, if you really look at it, because I have framed you now as Cinderellas, or underdogs. This is a role that as the US, we’ve played that very, very well for many years.
“So you’re welcome, Australia.”
