Popovic challenges Australia to ‘do something special’ in World Cup knockout stages

Syndicated reporting provided by Stats Perform and reviewed by the SoccerNews editorial team.

Tony Popovic has challenged his Australia side to “do something special” after a goalless draw with Paraguay was enough for his team to reach the last 32 of World Cup 2026.

Having beaten Turkiye in their opener, the Socceroos were beaten by co-hosts United States on MD2, meaning there was a lot riding on Thursday’s clash at San Francisco Bay Area Stadium.

It was far from a classic, with the match finishing with a total of 0.83 expected goals between the teams (Paraguay 0.25, Australia 0.58), the first match of the World Cup to finish below 1.0 xG.

Moreover, Australia were kept goalless in back-to-back matches within a single World Cup for the first time since 1974, while their two goals throughout the group stage equals their fewest in a pool since not scoring any in 1974.

But head coach Popovic is only interested in looking forward to the knockout stages.

“The staff, the players – just a wonderful young group of men – and now we go to Dallas and we’ll try and do something special,” he said.

“You can have opinions on how the game was played, or what we both thought we needed, but we at no stage felt that we were playing for a draw. I thought we controlled the game quite well, and were in control, and had the better opportunities.”

A game that would have been a lot more fun in a format without the third-place parachute. Next. pic.twitter.com/2XqfLNr5rc

— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) June 26, 2026

Paraguay are almost certain to make it through as one of the eight best third-place teams, having accumulated four points from their games.

Head coach Gustavo Alfaro praised his side for bouncing back from their MD1 defeat to the United States, saying: “Recovering from such a hard result was really hard for us, and in spite of that, our team has been very solid in the past two games.”

However, Alfaro called for more space between the pitch and the advertising hoardings, after Julio Enciso clattered into them when battling Alessandro Circati.

Enciso got slowly to his feet, and Alfaro said: “I think that maybe if there was more space that will be good because of course there’s a lot of intensity when we are playing, and sometimes if a player gets destabilised, he could fall and get injured and these things can happen. 

“So, maybe we have to think about that and reassess.”

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