‘We lost control’ – Postecoglou

The West Asians went top of Group B after second half strikes from Hasan Abdel Fattah and Hamza Al Dardour handed them victory in Amman on Thursday as the Socceroos suffered their first defeat of the campaign.

From then on the din was deafening, lifting the Jordanian players to new heights and building a wall of sound that the Socceroos could not breach.

The Saudi-based 24-year-old striker again looms as the key man if the hosts can get something out of this game.

“The boys they have been preparing very well, very disciplined with a lot of motivation, so tomorrow I want to see 11 Ferraris on the pitch for Jordan”.

Socceroos coach Postecoglou told Fox Sports his side “lost control” of the match played in a hostile atmosphere.

On Friday morning the environment was electric, but in no way intimidating, and once the excruciatingly loud music system was turned off to allow play to start, the trumpets, drums, handclaps and chants dropped to the level of mere annoying.

But in the second half the Socceroos were caught napping by a few hit and hope long ball attacks.

With three of their next four qualifiers in Australia, where they play Jordan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan at home, and only minnows Bangladesh away, there is a confidence they can regain their top spot and progress automatically.

Only the group winners in the five team pools are guaranteed a spot in the next round of Asian qualifying for Russian Federation 2018 and Australia, winners of their first three matches, now have little room for error.

“We’re not the finished product, we haven’t said we are and we’ve got a lot of improvement in us”.

Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper described the Jordanian national team as a spirited team.

It was the pattern of the half, with Oar and Rogic both having shots saved by Shafi, and Bakheet and Aldaradreh causing problems on the counter-attack, including one risky situation on the half-hour, when Spiranovic was forced to make a courageous save, diving at the feet of Aldaradreh.

“To be honest, we handled that really well in the past games and today I didn’t think we were good at handling that”.

“We firmly believe we’re on the right track and we’ve got a few home games to come, the task is still in our hands”. And this is a different Aussie side to 2012, one much better prepared and clear on how they play under Postecoglou.

“We had to roll our sleeves up and get a result, and we didn’t tonight which is disappointing”.

“That’s part of football”.