Australia left their two-game series against Brazil without a win, but with something harder to measure: evidence that the Socceroos are becoming a different kind of team. A late lapse turned a 1-1 draw in Townsville, played on a poor pitch, into a missed chance to beat the Seleção, and Brazil’s depth told in the closing stages of a fiery 4-2 defeat in Brisbane. Yet the overriding impression from the camp was of a side taking a step forward.
Tony Popovic had sensed the change before a ball was kicked. Only three months had passed since the squad were last together at the World Cup, but the coach spoke of a shift in the players’ demeanour — and it fits a journey that began more than a year earlier, when Australia sealed their World Cup qualification early by beating Saudi Arabia in June 2025.
The contrast with that moment is stark. Neither Nestory Irankunda nor Mohamed Touré were regular selections then; their true international breakouts came later, in the October friendlies against New Zealand. Paul Okon-Engstler, Patrick Beach and Lucas Herrington had not made their debuts, Cristian Volpato was still playing for Italy’s junior teams, Jacob Italiano was toiling in relative obscurity in Austria and Tete Yengi was known as “Kusini’s younger brother”. Now they have all been to a World Cup and most have secured moves into bigger leagues, with Herrington’s rise taking him from the A-League Men to the Premier League via MLS inside 12 months. Their clubs expect more of them, and Popovic says their “understanding of the game is certainly improving”.
What changed on the pitch was intent. The hard running and physicality expected of this Australia side were still there until the late fadeouts, when Brazil’s greater depth showed, but within that framework came a willingness to press higher, to drive between the lines, to make the risky pass and to try to play, rather than battle, their way out of trouble. It did not always come off — pressing higher left space behind for Brazil to exploit — yet the contrast with the side that bogged down against Egypt in the World Cup round of 32, or was blown out of the water by the United States in the first half of their group-stage defeat, was night and day.
“It’s something that we worked on throughout the whole camp,” Okon-Engstler said. “We wanted to be more aggressive with the ball and to be a bit more controlling through those stages of the game. I think there’s a lot of confidence to take out of these two games and the way we played.”
Okon-Engstler was the last player to speak to the media before the squad dispersed on Wednesday — Miloš Degenek and Paul Izzo left with declarations that they were off to Dreamworld — and his prominence felt apt. The 21-year-old was among Australia’s most impressive players across the series and stands as an emblem of their evolution: his ability to operate in tight spaces, turn upfield and break lines is the profile of midfielder the Socceroos need if they are to build on these performances. His own progression, trading Sydney FC for 1. FC Köln and the Bundesliga since the World Cup, is precisely the kind of challenge Popovic wants his players to embrace if they are to match battle-hardened top nations, and he is being educated quickly in the pressure, intensity, physicality and standards of the German top flight. Jackson Irvine believes there is more to come, saying that when Okon-Engstler’s physicality comes out even more it will be “quite frightening”, and describing him as “a talent”.
Remarkable, then, that Okon-Engstler only debuted last November. The 12 months of tinkering and experimentation Popovic undertook after automatic qualification were framed around the World Cup, but the flow-on effects will reach well beyond it. Those wins over Japan and Saudi Arabia in June 2025 could in time prove among the most defining the Socceroos have had in decades: without them, with qualifiers still to be played into 2026, the crop now seen as driving a new era would likely never have had the chance to break in, go to a World Cup, secure club moves and take the next step.
Alongside Alessandro Circati and Jordan Bos, who debuted under Graham Arnold, Australia now have a group of young players that former Socceroos coach Frank Farina this week described as a “new golden generation”. The public has bought in, too: a year ago the average punter would have struggled to pick out Beach or Okon-Engstler in a lineup, while now the team are selling out stadiums and thousands of children are turning up to open training sessions. The journey, the sense goes, is only getting started.