Arnie is building a siege mentality. It could carry the Socceroos all the way

So how can Arnold make them feel like underdogs again?

There are plenty of stories about the way Arnold motivated his players at the Central Coast Mariners and Sydney FC, pinning newspaper stories onto the walls of the dressing room and convincing them that everybody else thought they were rubbish to provoke a reaction. He did something similar at the World Cup, using the dismissive attitude of rival nations towards Australia to his advantage.

PROJECTED STARTING XIs

Australia (4-2-3-1): Maty Ryan; Gethin Jones, Harry Souttar, Cameron Burgess, Aziz Behich; Jackson Irvine, Keanu Baccus; Martin Boyle, Riley McGree, Craig Goodwin; Mitchell Duke.

South Korea (4-2-3-1): Cho Hyun-Woo; Kim Tae-Hwan, Kim Young-Gwon, Kim Min-Jae, Lee Ki-Jee; Hwang In-Beom, Park Yong-Woo; Lee Kang-In, Lee Jae-Sung, Son Heung-Min; Cho Gue-Sung.

“These ***** don’t know who Australian players are,” Arnold told his players before facing Argentina in the round of 16, as shown in the Netflix documentary Captains of the World Cup. “Go and show them ***** who we are. And at the end, offer them your shirt when you ***** beat them. Get out there and get into these *****.”

Alex Brosque, his old captain at Sydney FC, can sense Arnold going back to his old tricks.

“The reality is everyone does expect the squad to go close to winning it, because of how well they did at the World Cup, and how well they’ve been playing since,” Brosque said on SEN Radio’s The Global Game this week.

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“He’s helped build that by using the whole siege mentality initially. Now we expect them to win, and we’re criticising, and he’s going full circle back to ‘no one thinks we can do it’ again, or ‘no one thinks we’re good enough’. I feel like he’s using that to create that bubble within the change room there – ‘that back home, this is what they’re saying, they think we can’t do it. Let’s go out and prove them wrong.’ He’s always gotten the best out of his sides, I believe, when that’s the case.”

And so with a quarter-final to come on Saturday morning (2.30am AEDT) against South Korea, the strength of that bubble is about to be put to the test. It looks like a coin flip. South Korea are, man for man, the better team. But they are ranked three spots below Australia, according to the projected FIFA rankings. And the Socceroos have the luxury of two extra days’ rest and a clean bill of health. Some judges might even consider them to be slight favourites. Reputed stats company Opta has, in fact, made them equal favourites with Japan to win the whole thing from here.

Their blunt-force football was a tough watch in the group stage but nobody will care if the Socceroos have to bludgeon their way to the semis and beyond, if that’s what it takes. At risk of shattering the illusion, we wish them well.