ISTANBUL, June 14 \u2014 Australia upset Turkiye 2-0 on Sunday with its methodical defence and counter-attack playbook to secure the win in their Group D match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup at BC Place, Vancouver, in Canada.<\/p>\n
Anadolu Ajans\u0131 reported that Australia took the lead with a swift counter-attack in the 27th minute, as Nestory Irankunda punished the overstretched Turkish defence with a deep run and became the youngest player to score a goal for Australia at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Although Turkiye had more control of the ball and patiently built up its attacks, the possession was not enough to score an equaliser in the first half.<\/p>\n
The second half started similarly, with the Turkish side increasing the pressure to level the score, while Australia sought counter-attack opportunities to secure their narrow lead.<\/p>\n
Connor Metcalfe doubled the lead for Australia in the 75th minute with the same playbook, with Irankunda capitalising on a swift counter-attack to score his goal.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s five-man defence closed the box to any Turkish attempts trying to find a way through, which proved to be a tough nut to crack. The Turkish side ended the game with 28 shot attempts to Australia’s 8.<\/p>\n
As a result, Australia placed second in the group table, trailing the US, while Turkiye placed third, above Paraguay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ISTANBUL, June 14 \u2014 Australia upset Turkiye 2-0 on Sunday with its methodical defence and counter-attack playbook to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-735771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735771","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=735771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}