What Irankunda and Co. need to do to stay in Popovic's plans

Joey Lynch

CloseJoey Lynch is a Melbourne-based sports journalist and AYA cancer advocate. Primarily working on football, he has covered the Socceroos, Matildas and A-Leagues for ESPN for over a decade.Sep 10, 2025, 01:42 PM

You couldn’t have missed it if you tried; the sense of zeal that began when Mohamed Toure monstered Tyler Bindon off the ball to open the scoring in the Socceroos‘ 3-1 win over New Zealand on Tuesday. It reached a near-cacophonous crescendo when talisman-elect Nestory Irankunda shook the crossbar with a rocket of a free kick from at least 30 yards out in the 76th minute. Australian football was given a teasing glimpse of its potential on Tuesday evening, in a fixture in which two young attacking dynamos not only staked their claim, but saw Alessandro Circati become the youngest Australian men’s captain in almost half a century, leading the youngest Socceroos side since 2017.

If you had even the slightest bit of connection to Australian football, it was almost impossible not to get swept up in all the excitement; I have seen the future, and the future involves golazos. Well, most would have been swept up in it, with one rather notable exception. Because head coach Tony Popovic has proven adept at blocking out any kind of external noise or pressure surrounding how he goes about leading the Socceroos ever since he took over last year, his focus lasered on his plans to lead them into the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Indeed, while coaches will often say they don’t read what’s written about them in the media or monitor the discourse around them online, Popovic has developed a rare reputation for actually meaning it.

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Which is why, in hindsight, it also probably shouldn’t have been surprising that both Noah Botic and Adrian Segecic didn’t see any game-time across the two legs of the Soccer Ashes. For while excitement surrounding the presence of young and untried players in the squad had been ascendant — to the extent that Segecic was briefly the number one Australian trend on X when lineups for the Auckland fixture dropped without him in it — Popovic has a well-established routine when it comes to bringing young players into his national setup, an honour he has spoken about as being its own distinctive step in the process of becoming a Socceroo and which, generally, has had few exceptions during his tenure.

Like Maximilien Balard, Nectarios Triantis, Kai Trewin, Kasey Bos, and Paul Okon-Engstler before them, both Segecic and Botic were on watch-and-learn duties during their first time in camp over the past fortnight. They will have been given the opportunity to provide the coaching staff with an insight into their professionalism on and off the training track, as well as receive guidance from coaches and established members of the staff alike about what it takes to fit into the “elite environment” that Popovic is seeking to maintain with the side. They will have been given an insight into how to earn the coach’s trust that, when the lights are at their brightest, they’ll be able to deliver … and then back up and do it all again a few days later.

“The point of this exercise was to bring young, talented, potential players for the future and see where they fit in. And we’ll be happy either way,” Popovic said before the Auckland game. “We have learned a lot about them, regardless of who gets minutes in this game.”

But this young duo, or any player absent from this camp, shouldn’t be drawing a line through their World Cup hopes just yet. Nor should any members of the squad be planning their in-flight movie next June. Because for every player with designs on being part of Popovic’s squad for the World Cup, be they young or old, an established figure or a bolter, the coach made clear at a team meeting during the September window that a line has been drawn in the sand after qualifying. The slate and been wiped clean, he declared, and every player was once again expected to earn their place.

“What you did up until June — they’re learning very quickly — doesn’t guarantee your World Cup spot,” said Popovic. “You need to keep playing well to get on that plane to go to the World Cup, and the young boys have as much of an opportunity as the senior players. We want to increase the pool of depth and quality, not just numbers.”

So with this in mind, ESPN has taken a look at the youth that set tongues wagging across the past week, and asked what they need to do from here to get themselves on that plane to North America.

Nestory Irankunda, 19, and Mohamed Toure, 21, were at the vanguard of what was the youngest Socceroos side since 2017. Phil Walter/Getty ImagesMohamed Toure: Stay on the park

Toure certainly has all the tools to be the Socceroos’ starting striker come the World Cup. And after a September window in which he provided a match-winning assist in Canberra and netted his first and second goals for the national side in Auckland, he has probably even jumped to the front of the line.

But as Popovic repeatedly observed across the past fortnight, the 21-year-old Randers FC forward now needs to demonstrate that he can maintain this level without breaking down with injury, citing his recent injury that snapped his red-hot three-game start to the new Danish Superliga season. At a World Cup, Toure won’t be much good as a starter if he’s unable to back up to start and perform at a similar level just a few days later — an ability to do this is why Mitchell Duke has been such a stalwart for multiple coaching staffs — and Popovic will want him to demonstrate in the months ahead, both at club and international level, that he’s robust enough to shoulder that load.

Nestory Irankunda: Keep doing the boring things

There’s no player in Australian football right now that can elicit the same type of excitement that Irankuda can when he gets on the ball, especially when he brings his howitzer of a right leg to bear. But it’s not the highlight reel plays that Popovic — clearly a big fan and calling him a “special talent” after the Auckland clash — is most concerned about. Instead, the coach went out of his way to note the unsighted work that the teenager did across the past week and since he moved to Watford, pointing not to his header that went just over the bar in the Canberra leg of the window but, instead, the 30-meter sprint he had to do to even get in that position.

“What’s most pleasing for me is how hard he worked,” Popovic told Paramount on Tuesday evening. “That gets overlooked a fair bit but from what I’ve seen this year at Watford, the boy’s maturity and understanding that you have to work for the team, you have to defend if you want to be the best player [is evident]. You have to defend, and the talent will show with the ball. So really, really happy with his work rate.”

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Adrian Segecic and Noah Botic: Build on this

As disappointed as the Australian football public was not to see Segecic and Botic get on the park, the two attackers will no doubt feel that even moreso. But the hope will be that after seeing Irankunda and Toure shine, they’ll be burning for an opportunity. And after spending time under the all-seeing eye of Popovic and his coaching staff across the past week, a baseline for the duo has now been established — it’s now incumbent on them to go back to their clubs, continue to perform (or force his way into the Austria Vienna starting XI, in the case of Botic), and demonstrate that they’re working on what the Australian staff want to see them improve. They earned a spot in camp; now they need to earn the shirt.

“No major thought process,” Popovic said when asked about Segecic’s absence. “We’ve got 25 players. We’ve got many boys looking to make their debut. We have to respect all the players; it’s not just one player. He’s got to keep working. He’s had a taste of the Socceroos now in camp. He has to go back to his club and work like all the other players and keep performing well. And we’ll see for the next camp.”

Maximilien Balard: Go to the next level at NAC Breda

Emblematic of Popovic’s step-by-step approach with young players, Balard now looks primed to become a regular part of Socceroos squads. After sitting during the November window and not being selected for June after being part of a pre-window training camp, the midfielder kept his head down, implemented the feedback he received from Popovic — the nature of which he’s still keeping close to his chest — and performed well in his first two appearances in green-and-gold.

But with Jackson Irvine on the verge of returning from injury and a significant amount of midfield competition from the likes of Ryan Teague, Patrick Yazbek, Cameron Devlin, Anthony Cáceres, Aiden O’Neill, and more, nothing can be taken for granted. What Balard has over those rivals, however, bar St. Pauli skipper Irvine, is that he’s playing regularly in a major European league in the Eredivisie. And if he’s able to continue to develop a game which already has Breda supporters calling him “the Australian Kante” at that level, he’ll be well placed in the months ahead.

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What Irankunda and Co. need to do to stay in Popovic’s plans

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