{"id":648301,"date":"2026-05-04T04:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T04:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/648301\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T04:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T04:40:10","slug":"socceroos-midfielder-aiden-oneill-injures-ankle-playing-major-league-soccer-ahead-of-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/648301\/","title":{"rendered":"Socceroos midfielder Aiden O’Neill injures ankle playing Major League Soccer ahead of World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Socceroos will nervously await news on Aiden O’Neill after the industrious midfield regular suffered an ankle injury less than six weeks out from the World Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After being stepped on, O’Neill went down twice, then came off the field just 36 minutes into New York City FC’s 2-0 loss to DC United on Sunday, local time.<\/p>\n

The news will send waves through Socceroos camp, given O’Neill, looking to play in his first World Cup finals, has been coach Tony Popovic’s first-choice defensive midfielder along with Jackson Irvine.<\/p>\n

Toure scores again for Norwich<\/a><\/p>\n

Mohamed Toure scores his 10th goal in just 12 matches for Norwich to keep him in red hot form ahead of the World Cup.<\/p>\n

More recently, the likes of Paul Okon Jnr and Max Balard have also paired up with O’Neill, 27, who has started Australia’s past seven games and has 29 caps.<\/p>\n

The Socceroos will hope O’Neill’s injury is on the less serious end of the scale, given the short lead-in to the World Cup, with Australia’s first game on Sunday, June 14.<\/p>\n

O’Neill’s NYCFC coach confirmed, much like Irvine, he had already been playing with an ankle problem.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, he has an ankle issue,” Pascal Jensen said.\"Aiden<\/p>\n

Aiden O’Neill has played every game this season in the MLS for New York City FC. (AP: Nell Redmond)<\/p>\n

“But he plays with some issues in his ankle all the time. He doesn’t know any better, in fact. So that is something that we’re aware of.<\/p>\n

“But he had a moment in the game, I think it was five or six minutes before we took him off, he had a moment where he tried to turn and Aiden is a player that plays on the half turn always, either left or right, doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n

“But his ankle just locked and had too much pain to continue. He tried for a couple minutes, and I know for a fact, that Aido is not a guy that just steps out unnecessarily.”<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

O’Neill’s teammate Kai Trewin played a full game, as did fellow Aussie defender Kye Rowles for DC United.<\/p>\n

Popovic is due to speak to media on Monday afternoon in Sydney.<\/p>\n

The Socceroos have a training camp in Sarasota, then play a friendly against Mexico in Los Angeles on May 31 \u2014 the last game before Popovic selects his squad on June 1 \u2014 before relocating to their Bay Area base.<\/p>\n

Australia then play Switzerland on June 7 in San Diego, their final warm-up game.<\/p>\n

The Socceroos face Turkey in Vancouver on June 14, the United States in Seattle six days later, then Paraguay in Santa Clara on June 26 (all dates AEST).<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Socceroos will nervously await news on Aiden O’Neill after the industrious midfield regular suffered an ankle injury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[313752,1813,64,63,22685,240215,13198,42150,588,85,21418],"class_list":["post-648301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aiden-oneill","tag-ankle-injury","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mls","tag-new-york-city-fc","tag-soccer","tag-socceroos","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}