![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/71d1e8ee91726aa8001af7cf7adf4c97f7950e8350aa8e39f9ae992cd0dfa71a.png\")
<\/p>\nUS football pundit Mike Grella has doubled down on his criticism of the Socceroos while labelling Australians \u201cinsecure\u201d.<\/p>\n
Grella kicked off the verbal spat between both teams when he said the Americans should have no trouble beating the Socceroos, declaring them a \u201clay-up\u201d.<\/p>\n
And he did little to defuse the situation when speaking to ESPN\u2019s The Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday AEST \u2013 in fact he widened his criticism to include Australian fans who condemned him for his commentary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey caused an upset against T\u00fcrkiye. They had 20 per cent possession of the ball. They conceded 30 shots, which is a ridiculous amount, but they went on to win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
American football pundit Mike Grella\u00a0CBS<\/p>\n
\u201cI was gonna come on here originally and say some nice stuff about them, but \u2026 now the fan base has gone a little too far.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe messages I\u2019m getting from the Australia fan base is about the country, about us as a country, about the US and about how it sucks in all these different categories.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, you know, really, it\u2019s been unbelievable. They wear a yellow shirt. I think that maybe they\u2019re getting themselves confused with Brazil or another team that\u2019s won something in the past. They\u2019ve never won anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grella continued:<\/p>\n
\u201cI look up what Australians are good at. I see cricket, I see rugby, maybe outback. I mean, I\u2019m sure they got some wallet safaris out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut on (Saturday morning AEST), I think they\u2019re going to come into a team that it\u2019s a little bit more their time that has a little bit more quality, like I\u2019ve said before. And I think that we\u2019ll see a US win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played with Australian guys in the past. There\u2019s been some legends of the game that are Australian. I love Australians. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever met a soft Australian. They\u2019re tough, right? They\u2019ve got a game that\u2019s called Aussie Rules that is incredibly physical.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9054af872c621be80136bac4b5977202beb90d83.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The Socceroos celebrate Nestory Irankunda\u2019s goal.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019ll tell you one thing they are, it\u2019s insecure. It\u2019s insecure about football, and it\u2019s insecure about (Saturday) because I think they\u2019re in for a rude awakening.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s gonna be a massive reality check.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grella works for the CBS\/Paramount TV group in the US and played most of his career with lower-level English sides.<\/p>\n
He made one single appearance in the Championship for Leeds United in 2010-11. Apart from that, he played for the likes of Carlisle United, Swindon Town, Brentford, Bury and Scunthorpe United.<\/p>\n
He also played in Denmark and the US and holds the record for the quickest goal in MLS history, surpassing Tim Cahill after he found the back of the net in the first seven seconds of a match in 2015.<\/p>\n
Grella played youth matches for the USA but never played at senior international level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US football pundit Mike Grella has doubled down on his criticism of the Socceroos while labelling Australians \u201cinsecure\u201d.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-741134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741134","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=741134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}