Middlesbrough’s 1-0 loss to Hull City in the English Championship play-off final<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\nKey attacker McGree was forced off in the 76th minute at Wembley Stadium after pulling up from a challenge \u2014 just three weeks out from Australia’s opening group stage match against Turkey.<\/p>\n
McGree was distraught and put his face into his hands before coming off, and immediately looked unlikely for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
His absence was confirmed when the 27-year-old was not among the players called into camp on Tuesday ahead of warm-up friendlies against Mexico on May 31 and Switzerland on June 7.<\/p>\n
McGree would have already been in camp \u2014 then Southampton was punted from the play-off final for spying and Boro took its place in the decider.<\/p>\n
McGree famously delivered the assist for Mathew Leckie’s winner against Denmark that sent Australia into the round of 16 at the 2022 Qatar World Cup.<\/p>\n
He also teed up Aziz Behich to score the decisive goal against Japan in qualifying that secured the Socceroos’ place at this World Cup.<\/p>\n
McGree’s absence leaves Australia short of options at that inverted left-winger role, especially after Craig Goodwin failed to find enough form and game time in the A-League Men after a serious groin injury to make the training camp.<\/p>\n
Striker Nicholas D’Agostino and defender Hayden Matthews had already withdrawn through injury.<\/p>\n
Veteran striker Mitch Duke, a hero in Qatar, was among eight players cut from the training camp squad in Sarasota, Florida.<\/p>\n
Striker Tete Yengi, younger brother of Kusini Yengi, has received his first call-up after top form at Japanese club Machida Zelvia.<\/p>\n
Skipper Maty Ryan and star defender Alessandro Circati joined after their domestic seasons finished, with Lucas Herrington, Awer Mabil, Kye Rowles, Paul Okon-Engstler and Kai Trewin also heading into camp.<\/p>\n
Duke, Alex Robertson, Daniel Bennie, Raphael Borges Rodrigues, Anthony Caceres, Dylan Leonard, Gianni Stensness and Ante Suto were all released.<\/p>\n
ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\nABC 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
The Socceroos have been holding a training camp this month in Florida in preparation for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
The squad will head to Los Angeles later this week for a friendly against Mexico, before setting up at their base in Oakland.<\/p>\n
The final 26-man squad must be submitted to FIFA by June 1.<\/p>\n
The Socceroos begin their World Cup campaign against T\u00fcrkiye on June 14 (AEST), followed by matches against the United States and Paraguay.<\/p>\n
AAP\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pivotal Socceroos attacker Riley McGree has been ruled out of the World Cup in a hammer blow to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[5844,64,63,16135,596,156163,42150,588,85],"class_list":["post-694590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-abc-sport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-football","tag-riley-mcgree","tag-socceroos","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694590","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=694590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}