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Al Ain: Graham Arnold will wait until the morning of his team's meeting with the United Arab Emirates before deciding on his starting lineup as reigning champions Australia are looking for a place in the semifinal of the AFC Asian Cup 2019, Friday.
Arnold will break with his usual practice of informing his players before the last practice session to give himself and his coaching staff more time to evaluate his team as a result of their penalty shoot-out victory. Uzbekistan in the round of 16.
The Central Asians pushed the Socceroos to the extreme when they met in Al Ain on Monday. Goalkeeper Maty Ryan has become the Australian hero as the country progresses to the third round for the third straight tournament.
"We have recovered very well against Uzbekistan – extra time and shots on goal – and the boys are in fantastic space," said Arnold. "Probably playing these extra minutes has built a lot of trust and conviction within the group. Looking at this performance, we know that we still have a lot of improvements and expect a great performance tomorrow night.
"Normally, I appoint the team at night – or the last training session – before, but for this one, I decided not to do it. It's really on the recovery side. We only played three days ago and I want to see new players train today. I want to see the mentality and freshness and I will make the decision regarding the alignment tomorrow morning. "
Round of 16: Australia vs Uzbekistan
Tom Rogic will miss the match due to a suspension, but with Mathew Leckie now completely recovered from a thigh injury and Andrew Nabbout declaring himself fit, Arnold now has an almost full team available for the match against the organizers of the tournament.
The match will be the fourth time in five games of this year's AFC Asian Cup that the Socceroos will face against a West Asian team and Arnold thinks that previous matches with Jordan, Syria and Palestine will have helped prepare his team for the Hazza bin Zayed stadium.
"Uzbekistan has played more of a European-style game, I think the experience of playing against Syria and Palestine is closer to the UAE," he said. "We learn a lot every game. UAE is the country of origin and we respect the UAE, but we will play our way, in our style and we expect to dominate the game.
"We did our homework on them and definitely on us. We believe a lot in our group. We work a lot with the players mentally to get this advantage over the opposition. "
And Arnold believes that a home-based audience is just as likely to put pressure on tournament organizers as it is to intimidate players when they meet Friday night.
"A complete stage for the UAE can work in two ways," he said. "It can help or vice versa and put a lot of pressure on them because it's their home country. It has nothing to do with us. All we can do is prepare ourselves properly and prepare ourselves.
Source: the-afc.com
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