USA vs. Australia packs history, intensity & World Cup stakes | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

IRVINE, Calif. – Most American sports watchers would not likely rank Australia high on any list of rivals or antagonists.

Sure, the US women’s national team have had some memorable, high-stakes duels with their talented Aussie counterparts, the Matildas, over the years. And the countries have tangled in a range of Olympic events over the decades. They also have comparable relationships to soccer, still scrapping for respect abroad and mainstream attention at home amid more established pastimes.

Yet the FIFA World Cup can serve up all flavors of unexpected international beef, so it seems with Friday afternoon’s Group D match between the US men’s national team and Australia in Seattle (3 pm ET | FOX, Telemundo, Peacock).

Well, sort of.

Last meeting

The backstory dates to October 2025, when the USMNT hosted the ‘Socceroos’ for a friendly at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, home of the Colorado Rapids, months before the two sides were drawn together in Group D at the World Cup. It was a good test that swiftly escalated, an eventual 2-1 US victory which turned out to be something of an inflection point.

“The game in Colorado was fun, I think,” winger Tim Weah wryly told reporters at the Yanks’ base camp on Wednesday. “It was our first experience with Australia.

“It was aggressive, and I think from that game in Colorado, we've changed a lot.”

The visitors snatched an early lead via Jordan Bos and got stuck in liberally, throwing themselves into some rugged tackles, including one that forced US star Christian Pulisic into an early exit just past the half-hour mark (and bear in mind, Pulisic took a hard kick in last week’s 4-1 opening rout of Paraguay that’s put his availability for Friday’s game in question).

Even after Seattle Sounders FC midfielder Cristian Roldan fed LA Galaxy academy alum Haji Wright for an equalizer minutes later, head coach Mauricio Pochettino was seething.

“You could see that they were up for it, and they were putting in challenges,” recalled Sebastian Berhalter, who wasn’t called up for that window but was watching from back in Vancouver.

 “I think that's when Mauricio had that halftime rant.”

Bring the fight

In an emotional moment captured by U.S. Soccer’s ‘Behind The Crest’ series and HBO’s behind-the-scenes documentary ‘U.S. Against The World,’ the USMNT got an earful from ‘Poch,’ who urged them to assert themselves both with and without the ball – to “match the aggressivity” of the Aussies.

“It was dead – was dead, the team!” declared Pochettino of his side’s reaction to taking an early punch. “If you make a mistake, I don't care, but communicate and fight, OK? Be aggressive. Every time that we play, we create chances.”

The USMNT duly reached another gear, with Roldan finding Wright again for a well-taken winner as Pochettino’s mantras about intensity and assertiveness sank in for the entire group. The bottom line: “We're American. We don't take s--t,” as Berhalter phrased it this week.

“Even though he's Argentinean, he has that mindset of like, look, this is what we do, and this is who we are, and this is what America is about,” added the Whitecaps star. “Even from an outside perspective, he showed us Americans what we're about, and he really drills that into us.”

Aussies react

That’s only half the story here, though. The Socceroos are fresh off an unexpected 2-0 upset of Türkiye in Vancouver on Sunday, in which they gleaned a useful bit of extra motivation from Türkiye captain Hakan Calhanoglu’s cocky pregame prediction that his “more talented” team would “dominate.”

In similar fashion, Aussie media have this week seized upon remarks by US broadcast pundits and MLS alumni Alexi Lalas and Mike Grella denigrating the Aussies as a limited side the USMNT should beat, turning that perceived disrespect into a major discussion point.

“This is an average team by any measure, and certainly not a great team,” Lalas said of the Socceroos, while Grella termed Friday’s match “a layup” for the host nation.

Words like that have become literal bulletin-board material for head coach Tony Popovic and his squad, and turned Grella in particular into something of an overnight celebrity down under.

The ex-Red Bull New York winger has been blasted as “the Socceroos’ biggest hater” and “Australian football’s public enemy No. 1” in headlines that are unmistakably intended to inspire an Aussie roster which features the New York City FC duo of Aiden O'Neill and Kai Trewin and Rapids phenom Lucas Herrington, spearheaded by electric young winger Nestory Irankunda, scorer of a superb opening goal over the weekend.

“We all have social media and we obviously see the comments, and yeah, there were comments before the Türkiye game,” said O'Neill on Wednesday. “We're quite OK with people commenting. We just go out and play our game.

“No, not really. I think Americans actually love Aussies,” O'Neill replied when asked if any of his American NYCFC teammates were “condescending” towards him or Australian soccer in general. “That's probably the general consensus.”

Tall task

Which takes us to another quirk of this would-be rivalry: None of the current players are stirring the pot in the lead-up to a match where the winner could top Group D, based on the Türkiye vs. Paraguay result late Friday night in San Francisco (11 pm ET | FS1, Telemundo, Peacock). 

Quite the opposite, actually.

“One thing in football, one of the most important things is to respect your opponent. All the talk is just nonsense to me,” Weah told reporters at the Yanks’ Orange County base camp Wednesday morning, where he and his teammates trained before catching a flight to Cascadia, paying tribute to ex-RBNY star Tim Cahill and other Aussies of note.

“When you look at the Australian team, they're a young team that has a lot of fight, a lot of grit and a lot of hunger, just like us," Weah continued. "So we respect them in the same way that we respect any other opponent. I think it's going to be a lovely game. I don't know what the media is trying to do, but we're not really focused on that. I think we're focused on the bigger picture.”

Tyler Adams, who was Grella’s RBNY teammate a decade ago, rolled his eyes when the topic was mentioned.

“No, it's not going to be a layup. If anything, it's going to be one of the most difficult games that we play,” Adams said on Monday. “We saw a team that went out against Türkiye and competed at a very, very high level. They're combative, they're smart, tactically they were unbelievably sound.”

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