Wednesday, March 30 2005
Australia's foray into Asian football met with success last night as it extended its unbeaten international run to 11 matches with a comfortable 3-0 victory over Indonesia in the tsunami benefit match at Perth's Subiaco Oval.
Despite leaving several top European stars on the sidelines, it was the Australia-based players who delivered for the Socceroos, with striker Ante Milicic netting the first two and substitute David Zdrilic the third.
Coach Frank Farina said he was happy with the performance and confident about his team's chances of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany.
"In all areas of the park we did have depth tonight," he said. "It (qualifying for the Cup) depends on us keeping free of injury - that's the only thing that will really hamper us if you like.
"In terms of defensively, midfield and attack I'm pretty happy with what we've got at the moment."
The Socceroos had made eight changes to the line-up which struggled to beat Iraq 2-1 in a friendly in Sydney on Saturday.
Their big name players, including Everton's Tim Cahill and Middlesbrough's Mark Schwarzer, were left out of the starting line-up, along with Parma's Marco Bresciano.
Australia, who have lost only once in 12 previous full international encounters with Indonesia, started slowly and almost conceded a goal in the opening seconds of the fundraising match for Indonesian victims of December's tsunami.
A through-ball from Indonesia's Firman Utina after just 90 seconds found striker Iham Jaya Kesuma who ran clear with only the goalkeeper to beat, but his angled shot was easily blocked by the lanky Zelko Kalac diving to his left.
But from then on such attacks on the Australian goal proved extremely rare, and as the hosts began to take control so too did their wingers Brett Emerton and Stan Lazaridis.
Lazaridis in particular began to cut a swathe through the Indonesian defence and it was his magic which set up the opening goal as he jinked down the left to cross onto the head of the rising Milicic who guided the ball into the top corner in the 25th minute.
Australia extended its lead in the 57th minute when Crystal Palace defender Tony Popovic headed a corner down to Milicic who appeared to slot it home, although replays showed it came off the luckless Indonesian defender Hamka Hamzah.
Milicic later conceded that he had not touched the ball, although it was awarded to him by Japanese referee Hirofumi Yamanishi.
The pressure continued to mount on Indonesia, although they did show a flicker of life early in the second half when Kurniawan D Yulianto tried to latch onto a cross from the left only to fire over the bar.
By midway through the half the Australians were pushing forward in greater numbers and the icing on the cake came for the home team in the 85th minute when Zdrilic was given an extraordinary amount of time to control the ball in the six-yard box and fire past goalkeeper Hendro Kartiko.
The match was preceded by a minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami as well as the latest victims of Monday's earthquake off Sumatra.
Players donated their match fees to the fund-raiser.
Taken from ABC Sport
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