MELBOURNE, Australia -- If there were ever a game in which both teams could feel aggrieved to have missed out on all three points, and what a win could have meant for their 2026 FIFA World Cup qualification hopes, yet simultaneously be grateful for the point they did claim, it would be the 0-0 stalemate between Australia and Saudi Arabia on Thursday.
As the dust settled at AAMI Park, it felt almost incredulous that the game finished scoreless. On multiple occasions, the Socceroos were presented with gilt-edged chances to score, only for their final touch to prove wayward or tepid. The visitors saw an early period of control peter out without a single shot -- at full-time they would be credited with only three official attempts on goal despite nearly 60% of possession, compared with Australia's 13 -- and while they thought they'd stolen victory with a 94th-minute dagger, Sultan Al-Ghannam's would-be-winner was disallowed due to obstruction by an offside (by centimetres) Ali Al-Bulayhi. This, in turn, gave the hosts a reprieve they almost turned into a ridiculous late winner via Riley McGree's bicycle kick. Twists aplenty but, ultimately, no goals.
In the broader context of AFC qualifying, the result sees the teams largely as they were. With five games played and five to come, they both sit on six points in Group C -- Australia second ahead of Saudi Arabia on goal difference -- and remain the most likely sides to join Japan in automatically punching a tickets to the 2026 FIFA World Cup with a top-two finish. They were even done an unlikely favour by China in a later fixture, with Zhang Yuning's dramatic 90th-minute winner seeing Branko Ivanković's side defeat Bahrain to prevent the Gulf team from leapfrogging them into second. It's not the worst position for either to be in, with plenty of football yet to be played; and even if second place proves beyond one of them -- or both -- the expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams means another phase of qualification awaits teams that finish third and fourth in the groups.
Simultaneously, however, the circumstances that have delivered them to this point are not how either side would have envisioned things. With every other opponent in the group now played once, Australia and Saudi each have a single win -- against China -- three draws and a loss. Both are scoring at a rate of less than one goal a game, with the Socceroos the only nation from Asia to go scoreless in three fixtures during this phase of qualification. While Bahrain may have fallen a point behind after their loss to China, the latter have drawn level on six points, despite playing quite badly at times, and bottom-placed Indonesia, Saudi's next opponent, are just three points back with a game in hand (albeit, that contest is a likely loss to Japan). This means there's very little safety net between the disastrous possibility of failing to qualify from this phase and not even advancing to a further phase. Just like Thursday's game, it's almost contradictory. Both Australia and Saudi Arabia are well placed but, simultaneously, qualification sits on a knife edge.
The fact of the matter is that if either side had simply done what was expected in their opening fixtures, things would be much simpler. Should results elsewhere have been the same but Australia hadn't fallen to a calamitous defeat by Bahrain on the Gold Coast -- just their second home loss in a 'live' World Cup qualifier since 1981 -- and converted one of their numerous chances to defeat Indonesia subsequently, they'd be in a commanding position even with yesterday's draw. The same goes for the Saudis, whose winless run in home qualifiers stands at four after draws with Bahrain and Indonesia as well as a first defeat to Japan after a 2-1 loss to Jordan in the final fixture of the previous stage of qualification. The squandered opportunities on Thursday, therefore, exist both within the context of the game and the broader scope of qualification.
This probably explains why both coaches on Thursday were different to those who commenced this phase of qualification: Tony Popovic in his third game in charge of Australia, after taking over from Graham Arnold, and Hervé Renard in his first after returning to Saudi to replace Roberto Mancini. For the Australian, the result continued an unbeaten start at the helm of the side he played for 58 times, joining a 3-1 win over China and a 0-0 draw away to Japan during the last window. Given the circumstances of his arrival -- his appointment coming just 20 days before the clash with China in Adelaide -- it's a beginning that would have looked better with a win over the Saudis but, again, could have been a lot worse.
The Socceroos were somewhat reeling after their loss to Bahrain and draw with Indonesia that sparked Arnold's surprise resignation, but Popovic has steadied the ship, won the game he had to win, and taken points off the two other strongest teams in the group. That's a positive. The players have also responded; a change in culture from Arnold's more relaxed, 'Socceroo Family' atmosphere to the more austere, 'elite' expectations of Popovic has seemingly proven invigorating. On a footballing level, the move from one coach to the other wasn't philosophically revolutionary but the change to a 3-4-2-1 in possession, while still clearly a work in progress, appears to have a higher ceiling and level of adaptability than the grinding approach of Arnold.
As the likes of Joe Gauci and Jackson Irvine remarked post-game, the Socceroos are in a better place compared to were they a few months ago. And with fixtures against Indonesia and China -- the two lowest-ranked sides in the group -- to come after facing Bahrain away next week, they're entering a three-game stretch in which nine points isn't an unfair expectation. Craig Goodwin will be back from suspension for the Bahrain game, but an ankle injury to Nishan Velupillay, who provided a spark upon his second-half introduction, is a potential blow. And for all the foundations being laid, we're still yet to see this side put together a full 90 minutes under Popovic, with the first half against the Saudis, despite producing more chances to score, acknowledged by the coach as one in which they struggled in possession. As a result, the chances spurned mostly came from high transitions and set pieces, a familiar bugbear.
Ultimately, on Thursday, missed chances haunted a Socceroos outfit that probably should have won. An "OK result", and an "opportunity maybe missed," as Popovic described it. But lest that become the legacy of this qualification campaign, the Socceroos need to take another step in the coming games, starting in Riffa next Tuesday.