{"id":687565,"date":"2026-06-06T07:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T07:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/687565\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T07:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T07:55:08","slug":"sick-of-it-socceroo-connor-metcalfe-fires-back-at-us-barbs-in-world-cup-buildup-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/687565\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sick of it\u2019: Socceroo Connor Metcalfe fires back at US barbs in World Cup buildup | World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Socceroos midfielder Connor Metcalfe has heard every barb coming Australia\u2019s way from the United States \u2013 and he\u2019s had a gutful of it. Since Australia<\/a> were drawn in Group D along with the co-hosts in December, the Socceroos have proved the punching bag for pundits based in the USA.<\/p>\n

Former striker Landon Donovan labelled Socceroos coach Tony Popovic as \u201csmug\u201d and tipped the Australians to finish fourth behind the US, Turkey and Paraguay and exit in the group stage. \u201cThanks for coming, Aussies and your smug coach \u2013 you can get back on the Qantas airplane and head back home, pal,\u201d he quipped.<\/p>\n

CBS pundit Mike Grella described the Australia fixture as a \u201clay-up\u201d for Mauricio Pochettino\u2019s world No 16 American side. This week, former US international Alexi Lalas threw more fuel on the fire when he described the Socceroos as an \u201caverage team\u201d after the 27th-ranked side\u2019s 1-0 loss to Mexico.<\/p>\n

While coach Popovic has laughed off the jibes coming Australia\u2019s way, it\u2019s clearly given fuel to the fire for his players. But there are still almost two weeks until that clash on 19 June (20 June AEST), with Australia focused on a friendly against Switzerland then their opener against Turkey.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I\u2019ve seen all the US stuff, and I\u2019m just sick of it, to be honest – I just am,\u201d Metcalfe said on the eve of the friendly on Saturday. \u201cLike all this talk \u2013 it\u2019s just \u2013 let\u2019s just wait for the game, whatever happens, happens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just so much rubbish and I\u2019m just sick of it. So we\u2019ll just wait and we\u2019ll play – it\u2019ll be a good game. We had a friendly against them. It was tense, it was feisty, and probably going to be the exact same.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that game, in Colorado in October, the US dealt Australia their first defeat under Popovic.<\/p>\n

The 2-1 defeat was a fiery, physical game, with US defender Chris Richards at one point ready to square up to Socceroo Jason Geria after skipper Christian Pulisic was injured in a challenge.<\/p>\n

Popovic declared Cristian Volpato \u201cfit and available\u201d to face Switzerland and expected him to get minutes, after the attacker arrived in camp too late to play Mexico. The Socceroos boss said Volpato was looking his best since switching his allegiance from Italy and joining the camp, having needed to get up to speed as his conditioning was behind other players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubts about him as a person or as a player,\u201d Popovic said. \u201cWe\u2019ve just got to get him fit. He hasn\u2019t played a lot of football and he had eight to nine days off before he joined us.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s working hard. He\u2019s trying to get up to speed and we\u2019ve seen some good inroads in the last couple of days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metcalfe batted away a question regarding whether Volpato\u2019s late change of allegiance had been an issue within the squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been pretty smooth sailing. I mean, he\u2019s come in, he\u2019s a really nice, relaxed guy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe see it online and we know the past and what\u2019s been done, but we\u2019re not here to talk about that. Whatever\u2019s said is done, so it\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Socceroos midfielder Connor Metcalfe has heard every barb coming Australia\u2019s way from the United States \u2013 and he\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-687565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}