Graham Arnold, manager of Australia, is smiling as he scrolls back to last December, to the World Cup in Qatar and to facing Argentina in the last 16, Lionel Messi and all. “Mind games,” Arnold says of Messi, “mind games.”
Arnold laughs as he explains.
“Messi, he scored the first goal and that was their first shot — in the 43rd minute. Straight after that, he’s looking up into the stands and the game’s going on. He’s wanting our defenders to be asking, ‘What the hell is he looking at up there?’ Mind games.
“He’s amazing. I’ve coached against Messi four or five times and it’s been really interesting to watch how his game has changed as a No 10. He stands offside, walks back. He’s most dangerous when we’ve got the ball. He just lets the game go past him. There was data showing him running only 4km-5km at the World Cup.
“I kept saying to the boys, he’d stand offside and we just have to leave him. ‘We press and they’re a player short.’ With Angel Di Maria on the other side, sometimes they’re two players short, so it’s 10 vs eight. ‘Let’s go!’
“Then when they’re in possession, they bring the ball forward and he still just stands there. Next thing the midfield is going past him, then Messi gets the ball and off he goes. As I say, mind games.”
Football’s 24-hour news cycle means half the planet has already forgotten the detail of Argentina-Australia in Al Rayyan.
Messi, as Arnold says, opened the scoring and Julian Alvarez made it 2-0. It was, seemingly, game over before the hour. But Enzo Fernandez then diverted a Craig Goodwin shot past Emiliano Martinez and Australia pushed for an equaliser. They almost got one, but Argentina hung on and two weeks later won the final against France.
France, the defending champions, had been Australia’s first group-stage opponents in the tournament, so their level of opposition could hardly have been higher. In between were Tunisia and Denmark and two historic 1-0 victories. Australia had won only two World Cup finals matches before.
This degree of difficulty, making history, plus Australia’s organisation and effervescence led French newspaper L’Equipe to nominate 59-year-old Arnold as coach of the tournament; not, for example, Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni or Walid Regragui of surprise semi-finalists Morocco. Back in Australia, they also understood the scale of Arnold’s players’ achievement.
“The expectation from the nation and the whole world was that we’d end up 32nd (of the 32 finalists),” Arnold says. “I’m not being disrespectful, because the players give us everything, but we don’t have any playing in the top five leagues in Europe. My whole front line was playing in the A-League (Australia’s domestic league). That’s part of why I went for kids.
“But my expectations are always high. You’ve got to dream. If you don’t, you’ll never have any type of success. That was my messaging to the squad for four years. Mentally, it was about being the greatest Socceroo team in history — ‘To be that, you have to win two games’.
“We did it, and it did unite everyone.
“It’s crazy. In Australia, football’s a bit like a party sport. I shouldn’t say it that way, but it is. There are fan sites that are insane, all around the country. It was the same for the Matildas at the Women’s World Cup (this summer). Football really unites the nation and what people may not know is that in Qatar the Australian fan sites were on at 4am, 6am (because of the time difference). Tunisia was a 9pm kick-off, which was great. The whole country was invested.
“But as soon as the World Cup is over, the fans go away. Our sports ranking in Australia is probably No 5 — AFL (Aussie Rules), cricket, rugby league, rugby union, then football.
“But those other four don’t get any fan sites.”
On Friday, Arnold oversees another slice of Socceroo history — a first appearance at Wembley.
Australia’s last game in England, in 2016, was held at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light — Ange Postecoglou was their manager — and the one before, in 2003, was at West Ham’s former home Upton Park. Arnold was there as Frank Farina’s assistant. Australia won that one 3-1, with Harry Kewell among the scorers, on a night when Sven-Goran Eriksson changed the entire England team at half-time.
“This is a special moment for us, hugely special,” Arnold says. “We’re grateful to the English FA and to Gareth (Southgate), he’s a great man.
“I grew up watching FA Cup finals in Australia on TV at the old Wembley. I think Southampton-Man United (in 1976) was the first one — Bobby Stokes.”
Under Arnold, who has been in charge since 2018, Australia’s FIFA ranking has risen to 27, placing them between South Korea and Serbia. This friendly against England follows one in China in June against Argentina, who requested Australia as opponents following their Qatar meeting, and against Mexico in Texas last month. There is rising Aussie visibility internationally.
And then there is the Postecoglou factor at Spurs.
“Honestly, I think the whole of Australia has become Tottenham fans,” Arnold says. “Ange has been remarkable. What he’s doing has really opened the eyes of the country as to how good he is and how good Australian coaches can be. The whole of Australia is loving it. Ange just laughs and shakes his head.”
The two contemporaries met up at Spurs’ lavish training ground a couple of weeks ago. They smiled at the surroundings, knowing where they had come from to be there. Arnold has strong opinions on the lack of Australian infrastructure.
He and Postecoglou have known each other for decades, first as players in the A-League, as internationals on the same Australia team, as coaches in the Football Australia system and as managers trying to win the A-League and more.
“My first memory of Ange is when we played against each other and I kicked the s**t out of him,” Arnold says, smiling again. “I was a striker and he was a defender.
“We’ve always got on well. We’ve known each other for decades, good mates, and competitors as coaches. It’s no shock to me what he’s doing.”
Postecoglou was manager of Australia from 2013 to 2017, winning the 2015 Asian Cup. Dutchman Bert van Marwijk replaced him on a short-term contract until elimination from the 2018 World Cup finals, then came Arnold.
“I basically took over from Ange with the Socceroos,” Arnold says. “His style is a little bit different to mine. But he is also motivated with extremely high goals.
“He does it his way — high pressing, take the respect away by being in the opposition’s face. The rotations, the triggers they have, it’s made very clear. He believes midfield is the engine. He’s big on making sure his No 6 is a very good ball-player, because you can’t play in pockets if you can’t find the pockets. I’m similar, but I’d maybe play more lop-sided at times.
“In Australia, you learn how to coach, not just manage. You’ve got to be able to coach kids and develop them because we don’t have the money. We have a salary-cap system. So we get the whole picture of coaching and managing.
“I went to watch Tottenham train and Ange is still coaching. I spent the day with him, watching, having a laugh. I watched them train and you could see the energy of the players, they were all on their tippy-toes, loving it. From what I hear, a lot of managers have two-hour sessions and it’s slow, but for Ange it’s short, sharp sessions.
“He trusts the players, and the higher you go, the more you can do that. Training and prep, that’s what Ange is good at. And recruitment — has he bought a dud? His attention to detail in recruitment is fantastic.”
Beyond the pitch, Arnold also sees the bigger picture of harnessing and motivating talent in a place as large and sleek as the Tottenham training ground.
“Everything is about the culture,” he says of Postecoglou and himself. “If everyone isn’t on the same sheet of paper, you’ll never be successful, and making sure that works is big in Australia. What you saw at Celtic (Postecoglou’s previous club, where he won the Scottish title in both his seasons there) was everyone on the same sheet of paper and it’s the same at Tottenham. The messaging is clear.”
Culture can seem an overused and perhaps vague explanation of success, but Arnold says it was vital to Australia’s bold showing at last year’s World Cup, to Postecoglou wherever he works and to a man who influenced Australian coaching — Guus Hiddink.
Hiddink was appointed Australia manager in 2005 and Arnold was his assistant. He calls the Dutchman his “mentor” and invited him to a pre-World Cup camp. Hiddink will be Arnold’s guest at Wembley on Friday.
“Guus was incredible. Guus was about culture. If you ever talk to anyone about Guus Hiddink, it’s always about the culture — players are like sons, staff are like brothers. That’s how he treated us. As a player, a lot of coaches I had were dictators, whereas Guus was about communication. He’d say, ‘The best way to communicate is listening’.”
It was Hiddink who prompted the biggest gamble of Arnold’s career when, in the last minute of extra time in the final World Cup play-off against Peru in June last year, Arnold removed his goalkeeper — and captain — Mat Ryan and replaced him with Australia’s third choice, Andrew Redmayne.
With a penalty shootout looming, Arnold had remembered Hiddink telling him he was considering replacing 6ft 3in Mark Schwarzer with 6ft 8in Zeljko Kalac were the 2006 World Cup play-off against Uruguay to go to a shootout.
“I was like, ‘My god!’,” Arnold says. “I asked Guus why and he said it was to get into the opposition’s brains. They’ll be asking, ‘Why?’.”
In the end, Hiddink stuck with Schwarzer, who made great saves, but the idea stayed with Arnold.
“I’d never forgotten that,” Arnold says. “I’d coached Mat Ryan with Central Coast Mariners aged 18-21. Matty is 6ft, Andrew Redmayne is 6ft 4in and more prepared to do antics on the line. Matty’s more reserved.
“It was a big risk, but I’d rather take the risk than not take it.
“We didn’t tell Mat because of what it would have done to him for the first 120 minutes. We confided in Redmayne but told him to keep it quiet. The most important thing was Mat’s reaction. When I took him off in the 118th minute, he looked at me, put the armband on Aaron Mooy, gave Redmayne a hug and told him to do it for the country.
“That was a decision based on mind games. The Peruvian coach had no idea about Redmayne, who was our third ’keeper, not second.”
Still, what a moment.
“I had the Winnebago ready!” Arnold says. “If it didn’t work, I was moving up to the north of Australia. No one would find me.”
But it did work. Hence Messi, hence Argentina, hence Friday night in north west London.
Arnold knows Europe well, because he was a player in the Netherlands and Belgium for seven years from 1990. He had been spotted playing at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and out of the blue later received a call from Roda JC coach Jan Reker.
“The pathway for Australian players to Europe had been started by Craig Johnston going to Middlesbrough and Liverpool,” Arnold says. “I remember an early game at PSV Eindhoven where Bobby Robson was in charge. He’d just bought Romario. What a team they had. After the game, Robson comes up to me and says, ‘Want a beer?’. He couldn’t speak Dutch. We had a laugh, fantastic.
“I learned so much, so quickly. I played against Dennis Bergkamp, with Louis van Gaal as the Ajax manager. I scored against Edwin van der Sar — he dropped the ball at my feet. For NAC Breda, we played the first game at the new Johan Cruyff Arena and Danny Blind still tells a story about me.
“Pele had been brought over to kick off. I was captain and the ref says, ‘Kopf of munt’, which is heads or tails in Dutch. I won the toss. He asked me what I wanted to do and I said, ‘I want to kick-off with Pele!’.
“That Europe experience was amazing. You were getting coached the Cruyff way, the way Barcelona would play under him, Van Gaal had a similar way.”
Arnold channels all these experiences into his coaching. Amazingly, in the Asian confederation, the World Cup cycle restarts next month. This England game and one against New Zealand at Brentford’s ground next Tuesday act as Australia’s preparation before qualification for the 2026 tournament begins.
Australia have two games in November, the first against the winners of Maldives vs Bangladesh in a pre-qualifying group play-off, then at home to Palestine. That fixture may soon have a question mark against it, given what is happening in Israel. Lebanon are also in their politically-charged group.
Arnold and Football Australia have these considerations; also, at a more mundane level, though of perhaps greater impact to him, is the ongoing quest for Australian government funding.
“We’re ranked 27 in the world,” he says. “But the domestic game still needs to be fixed. We don’t have a home, we hire a rugby league field — Leichhardt Oval (in Sydney). We pay to train there. They take down the posts, put soccer goals up. We have the highest participation in sport, yet we don’t have a home.”
Facing France and testing Argentina, beating Tunisia and Denmark, and all from a hired base? L’Equipe had a point about Australia’s overachievement and Arnold’s role in it.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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