Socceroos captain Mat Ryan says his “naive” team had to work “smarter” rather than harder against Indonesia in Jakarta on Tuesday night after a shock 1-0 FIFA World Cup qualifying loss to Bahrain at Robina Stadium.
Reduced to 10 men in the 77th minute on Thursday night when striker Kusini Yengi was sent off, the Socceroos suffered an even more crushing blow in the dying stages when an own goal from Harry Souttar secured the Bahrainis three points on the road to the 2026 World Cup.
“Defensively, the goal we conceded after the red card is not good enough but those things happen if you’re not doing the other things well enough and you put yourself in that scenario,” Ryan said.
“We were too naive in the way we played the game.
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“I don’t think it’s a case of needing to work harder but needing to work smarter. We didn’t ask enough of the right questions in the right areas, and we gave the goalkeeper a pretty quiet night and didn’t test him and didn’t test the defence well enough in the final third.
“When you come up against this (type of) opposition, if you don’t get that first goal and they stay compact, they’ve got strengths and they’re hard to break down.
“We’ve got to show personality and character now to respond in the strongest possible way. It’s down to us now.”
Apart from a frustrating night in attack, the Socceroos also let the Bahrainis’ attempts to milk free kicks with theatrical reactions to tackles get the better of them.
“We’ve spoken many times about the challenges that this (type) of opposition brings us,” Ryan said.
“If you don’t get that early goal, the time wasting comes into it, the so-called acting, going to ground and the referee’s then put in a position where he needs to determine whether it’s diving or whether it’s a legitimate foul.
“We’ve got to deal with those situations better and more maturely as a team. We’ve got to not put ourselves in a situation where that becomes a factor.”
Socceroos coach Graham Arnold was quick to give “full credit” to Bahrain despite his frustration with the visitors’ “play-acting”.
“That was the lowest amount of minutes of football that I’ve seen, 46 minutes total the ball was in the park and getting played, but overall we’ve just got to pick ourselves up quickly,” Arnold said.
“We’ve got a quick turnaround to Indonesia, and we’ve got to make sure we learn from that and move on.
“There’s nine (Group C) games to go. We need to get over it quickly, bounce back quickly and show that good Aussie DNA way of backs to the wall and off we go.”