Tony Popovic set to hand Socceroos debuts to Christian Volpato and Tete Yengi against Switzerlind

With the countdown to the Socceroos’ opening World Cup match against Turkey now down to a week it’s hardly a surprise that Popovic would want to give his only two uncapped players in the squad a run in the gold jersey but it’s still significant.

Volapato, in particular, is looming as a potential wildcard for the Australians after committing himself to the gold shirt at the last minute after previously pledging his allegiance to Italy.

It’s a sign of how highly the 22-year-old is regarded that Football Australia went into overdrive to get his transfer papers signed and delivered before the World Cup deadline but Popovic now needs him to get up to pace quickly.

“If everything is okay tomorrow, I am sure he will get some game time,” Popovic said.

“He’s fine. He’s a good young player, talented, good young man.

“There’s no doubt it’s about him as a person or as a player. We just got to get him fit. He hasn’t played a lot of football and he had eight to nine days off before he joined us.

“If I compare him to the group, he’s probably at the bottom in terms of his conditioning right now, but he’s working hard, he’s trying to get up to speed and we’ve seen some good inroads in the last couple of days.”

While the Australians are bracing for a tough opening clash against Turkey, there’s also a lot of focus on their second match against the United States, who are looming as the pivotal opponents in a very open group.

The warm up match against Switzerland has been deliberately scheduled for midday (Californian time) to replicate the kick off time when the Socceroos play the US in Seattle.

Leaving nothing to chance, the Australians squad also did a test run of their travel plans, flying to San Diego by charter plane on the eve of their match from their base camp in the San Francisco Bay area.

While the cocky trash-talking Americans are basing themselves in Los Angeles, the Socceroos are trying to keep out of the spotlight.

For their game with Switzerland they are staying at a $1,200 private lodge overlooking the Torrey Pines golf course where Tiger Woods famously won the 2008 US Open after a marathon 19-hole playoff.

“You don’t always get the outcome you want but we’ve got a fantastic opponent. I mean, wow, you get Switzerland, you think of the history and how far they’ve come in previous World Cups and their recent record in the Euros,” Popovic said.

“The bonus was knowing that they’d play at 12 (midday). They really pushed for the 12 o’clock which suited us. It’s on the West Coast, there is a bit of travel which we will have again when we play in Seattle.

“So it’s ticked a lot of boxes and most of all it’s another great hit out, fantastic opponent who will have high expectations at the World Cup, so it’s a great test.”

While pleased with his team’s second half performance in last weekend’s 1-0 loss to Mexico, Popovic said he wanted to see his players get off to a better start, conceding they had shown some signs of nerves playing in front of 80,000 at the Rose Bowl.

“We’re quite happy with how the players look physically and they seem to be getting better and better with each game. They would gain some confidence from finishing the game physically strong against Mexico, which was a positive,” Popovic said.

“We competed very well in the first half. We just have an expectation that we want to do better. There’s nothing wrong with that.

“If we look at the result alone, okay, we lost, but there were some good things there, and if the boys can gain more confidence from that match, great. We want to see periods of that. And then. We want to see all of that hopefully come together for Turkey.

“I’m not looking for any particular answers tomorrow in the game (against Switzerland). There are maybe some areas that we’d like to see some improvements.”