The Socceroos have fought off Saudi Arabia 3-2 to claim just their second win under coach Ange Postecoglou.
Australia bounced back from last week’s 2-0 defeat to Belgium behind early goals from Tim Cahill and Mile Jedinak to register Postecoglou’s first win since a 1-0 victory over Costa Rica in his debut as coach last November.
Cahill opened the scoring when he stole possession in centerfield to launch a quick transition attack, finishing off a deflected Massimo Luongo attempt on the goal line in the third minute.
The Socceroos went 2-0 up three minutes later when Jeninak found himself unmarked on a free-kick cross, easily converting the open header.
Young defender Bailey Wright joined in the action with a 76th minute goal in his international debut to squash a Saudi second half comeback.
An expressionless Postecoglou claimed to be pleased by the result in front of just 3,677 at London’s Craven Cottage, breaking his 10-month winless drought and easing some of the recent criticism targeted towards the 49-year-old.
“First up I was pretty happy,” he said. “We controlled the game for the most part and we retained our composure. Second half got really scrappy and opened up and we lost our composure a little bit and put pressure on ourselves. In the end we had to fight hard for something that should have been easy.
“That’s the way friendly games go. With those late substitutions there’s 12 fresh players on the pitch. It became really frenetic and we couldn’t control the tempo like we did in the first half.”
Second-string goalkeeper Mitch Langerak gave away a 69th-minute penalty for a low one-on-one challenge as Saudi Arabia produced the first of two final 30 minute goals to threaten an upset.
“It becomes a bit of a lottery and they got back into the game. We got stretched and struggled to cope.
“I was disappointed we didn’t control it better and stay composed but we’ll analyse that and see why it happened.”
Photo: Ian Walton/Getty Images
