MELBOURNE, May 26 (Reuters) – Australia playmaker \u2060Riley McGree has been ruled out of the World Cup in a \u2060blow for the Socceroos following a hamstring injury playing for English \u200cclub Middlesbrough over the weekend.<\/p>\n
One of Australia’s most creative players, McGree’s injury comes days before coach Tony Popovic confirms his 26-man squad for the June 11 to July 19 tournament in North America, \u200bwhere they play Turkey, co-hosts the United States \u2060and Paraguay.<\/p>\n
With the experienced Craig \u2060Goodwin unselected for a pre-World Cup training camp in Sarasota, Florida, McGree’s absence leaves \u2060Australia \u200clight on depth for attackers on the left flank.<\/p>\n
Mitch Duke’s hopes of returning to the World Cup are effectively over, with the veteran striker \u2060among a group of eight mostly fringe players cut \u200bfrom the training camp.<\/p>\n
Duke \u200cscored the goal in a 1-0 group stage win over Tunisia at \u2060Qatar 2022 \u200bto help Australia advance to the knockout phase.<\/p>\n
With Scotland-based striker Ante Suto also released, Popovic has given a first call-up to another uncapped forward in Tete Yengi, the younger brother \u2060of Kusini, who played a role for Australia \u200bin World Cup qualifying but was ruled out of the tournament by a thigh injury.<\/p>\n
Yengi, like Kusini, is a Japan-based striker.<\/p>\n
He was among a group of eight called \u2060up, including defenders Alessandro Circati, Lucas Herrington, Kai Trewin and Kye Rowles, seasoned winger Awer Mabil, goalkeeper Mat Ryan and holding midfielder Paul Okon-Engstler.<\/p>\n
Three names will need to be cut from the training squad of 29, with either Patrick Beach or \u200bJoe Gauci set to miss out as the third \u2060goalkeeper behind captain Ryan and Paul Izzo.<\/p>\n
Australia will warm up for the World Cup \u200bwith friendlies against Mexico in Pasadena on May \u200c30 and Switzerland in San Diego on June \u200b6 before meeting Turkey in their World Cup opener in Vancouver on June 13.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Himani Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, May 26 (Reuters) – Australia playmaker \u2060Riley McGree has been ruled out of the World Cup in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-694751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694751","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=694751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}