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As Tony Popovic puts the current Socceroos squad through their final World Cup preparations this week, he could be forgiven for casting his mind back 20 years.
After all, the warm sunshine of Florida and California during the pre-tournament training camp may have drawn parallels to a sun-soaked Kaiserslautern for the Socceroos’ first World Cup game in 34 years.
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However, the current set-up in the United States stands in stark contrast to the chilly temperatures of the southern Netherlands where the 2006 Socceroos — which included Popovic — prepared for their shot at glory with a camp described as like “torture”.
Then Socceroos boss Guus Hiddink had been coaching Dutch powerhouse PSV while juggling his Australian commitments.
It therefore made sense for PSV’s recently redeveloped headquarters in Eindhoven to serve as the starting point for what would be an unforgettable campaign.
But before the Socceroos could be put through their paces, they first had to shake off a major hoodoo.
In a series of articles looking back on the 2006 World Cup, foxsports.com.au spoke with some of those Australians who were there when the Socceroos ended the nation’s World Cup drought!
INSIDE AUSSIES’ REVENGE PLOT TO END WORLD CUP HEARTBREAK
Hiddink took over the Socceroos job from Frank Farina in 2005 ahead of the World Cup qualifier playoff against Uruguay.
The renowned Dutchman was aggressively headhunted by Football Federation Australia’s Frank Lowy and John O’Neill to end the nation’s World Cup drought after playoff heartbreak against Uruguay in 2001, Iran in 1997 and Argentina in 1993.
Hiddink famously took South Korea to the semi-finals of their home World Cup in 2002, and the Australian hierarchy wanted the former Netherlands and Real Madrid to manager to work his magic with the Socceroos.
The first task was to get past Uruguay in yet another intercontinental playoff.
The Uruguayans gave the Australians hell when the Socceroos made the almost day-long journey to Montevideo four years earlier.
Farina’s team were ambushed at the airport by a local mob who cursed, jostled and spat at the players in the arrivals hall after customs officers put them through lengthy bag searches.
Once at the team hotel, locals made noise outside all night to try disrupting their sleep.
The hostility then spilt onto the pitch as the hosts picked up a 3-0 win to overcome Australia’s 1-0 lead courtesy of a Kevin Muscat penalty in the first leg at the MCG.
In 2005, Hiddink ensured there would be no repeat.
“I was informed by staff of what had happened in 2001 against Uruguay and read reports about how chaotic it was for the Australian team in Montevideo and all the provocations … that’s why I organised a training camp in Buenos Aires and to go into Uruguay at the latest hour,” he told SBS a decade later.
There are no direct commercial flights from Uruguay to Australia.
So, the FFA organised with Qantas for the Socceroos to have their own private plane fly them direct from Montevideo to Sydney, with a brief stopover in the Cook Islands.
The Boeing 767 was decked out with massage facilities to allow the players to recover during the trip.
Qantas sponsored the Socceroos at the time and the connection between the airline and team even led to the quirky scenes of Hollywood star John Travolta being at the game.
Travolta was even in the dressing room after the game, singing Grease hit You’re the One That I Want and the Australian national anthem as part of the celebrations with the team.
Before it got that point, the Australians decided it was time for some payback on their rivals – who had grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first leg.
Hiddink arranged a mass booking of seats on flights to Sydney to disrupt Uruguay’s plans.
“On the way back, we had our private plane and I think Uruguay struggled get into Australia fresh, while we recovered fast after the 1-0 (first leg) loss,“ Hiddink recalled to SBS.
“Uruguay had to travel through Miami, Paris or whatever … they had to go through regular flights, and we also planned to go through regular flights and had some chairs blocked at the latest hour.”
The Australian public also decided it was time for revenge.
Many of the 82,698 fans in Sydney on Wednesday the 16th of November, 2005, booed the Uruguayan anthem.
The home crowd’s first moment of jubilation for the night came shortly after the hour mark when Hiddink brought Harry Kewell off the bench and the then-Liverpool star accidentally assisted Mark Bresciano’s equaliser on aggregate.
Yengi on debut goal vs. Switzerland | 00:53
Kewell not starting that night was a big surprise, but it would not be the last eyebrow-raising decision of Hiddink’s reign.
A nervy tie eventually went to penalties as the Socceroos held firm defensively for the remainder of the 90 minutes plus extra time.
Goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer was first the hero with two clutch saves in the shootout.
Then, Hiddink’s first objective was completed when John Aloisi stepped up to be the hero and ran around Sydney’s Olympic Stadium waving his first above his head in one of the most euphoric scenes in Australian sporting history.
“We were talking about that moment so many times, how important that moment was gonna be one day if we have a qualifier for World Cup,” Aloisi told SBS on the 20th anniversary last year.
“Then obviously, when you accomplish it, the realisation of satisfaction and the overwhelming sense of like relief that football was on the map and people were taking it seriously.”
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While Aloisi became an icon, former Socceroos goalkeeper Ante Covic still jokingly takes the credit for the shootout success.
“I was in the goals when all the boys were practising their penalties the day before,” Covic recalled to foxsports.com.au.
“Maybe I’ll try claim a little bit of that, that I let him score and gave him that confidence.”
With the monkey off Australia’s back, the nation was officially swept up in World Cup fever.
“To qualify after 32 years, it was the biggest hype in Australia at the time,” Covic recalled.
“Everyone got on board the bus of going to the World Cup. Whether you were here, whether you weren’t a fan of football, whatever. The whole country was behind us.
“The celebrations after we won against Uruguay – that’s replayed over and over again – but then to see how many Aussies came to the World Cup.
“In the bus, wherever we went, it was just a sea of green and gold. Green and gold followed you everywhere.”
‘ABSOLUTE TORTURE’: HOW BRUTAL CAMP ROCKED SOCCEROOS
As the nation rejoiced, Hiddink was not resting on his laurels.
He was determined that the Socceroos would not just be making up the numbers in Germany.
Once the players’ club campaigns were done and they had defeated then European champions Greece 1-0 in a farewell game in front of more than 95,000 fans at the MCG in late May 2006, the squad descended on Eindhoven.
Despite Europe being on the verge of a glorious summer, it was bitterly cold in the city with a population of less than 250,000 people.
The weather was the opposite of what they would be greeted with in a few weeks’ time, but it was emblematic of Hiddink’s approach from the second they set foot on the training ground.
“Coming into camp there was just a big buzz,” 2006 squad member Archie Thompson recalled to foxsports.com.au.
“Everyone was just excited to be part of a World Cup. I probably didn’t go through all the heartache like the other guys. For me, it was like ‘hey, this easy, my first time we qualified’.”
Thompson, who was 27 at the time, knew the facility well.
He had spent the first half of the year on a loan with Hiddink’s PSV after signing with Melbourne Victory for the inaugural season of the A-League.
But he quickly realised that was different to his previous encounters with Hiddink.
The World Cup was a whole new level despite so many squad members having graced pitches of Europe’s biggest leagues for several years.
So, Hiddink wiped the slate clean.
No one was guaranteed of their place.
Every player in the 23-man squad would have to fight and scrap for their place in the XI.
“It was a different competitiveness with the new manager coming in, there was spots up for grabs for everyone,” Thompson recalled.
“We all had positions that were up for grabs and that’s where the intensity was.
“Hiddink had a level that he demanded. The first time he came in there was a few fights on the training pitch because guys who’d been around for a long time, their spots were not guaranteed anymore.
“There was the same sort of intensity throughout Hiddink’s reign as coach.
“Every training session was always like that.
“Even in camp between games of a World Cup, it was high intensity.”
The spot fires were not just between the players as Hiddink spared no-one.
He had made the surprise call the previous year to elevate Mark Viduka to the captaincy in place of Craig Moore.
Viduka was with Middlesborough at the time, having previously made his name in the Premier League with Leeds, but had not previously been seen as a leader on the pitch.
The striker had always had a laid-back style and allowed his performances to do the talking rather than being a loud and vocal personality.
Hiddink straight away tried to prove a point to his leading man and the rest of the squad, however.
“Hiddink put the players through absolute torture. Mark Viduka called it like going to war,” Tom Smithies, who was The Daily Telegraph’s football editor at the time and travelled with the Socceroos throughout the 2006 campaign, recalled to foxsports.com.au.
“They were doing double sessions. He was brutal on them on physically and emotionally, he toughened them up.
“He seemed to pick on players. There was one session where he just went for Viduka – almost goading him.
“By the end of the session, Viduka was just smashing in these shots and was so angry that he was just so powerful. You could see the effect of what Hiddink was doing.
“He was so clever with understanding the players and how to motivate them.”
Socceroos draw with Switzerland | 01:56
Fishing trips offered some relief from the rigours of the training sessions, but most of the players down time was spent recovering.
They were exhausted from the gruelling sessions led by Hiddink and his assistants – future Socceroos boss and current Iraq manager Graham Arnold and the late Ajax and Barcelona icon Johan Neeskens.
“I remember training was very tough,” Harry Kewell told SBS last month.
“Guus Hiddink was working us hard. The staff were working overtime was make sure everyone was prepared.
“For me personally, the build-up great. We were ready, we were strong, we were fit.”
‘TOUGH AS NAILS’: THE PRE-WORLD CUP STATEMENT THAT HAD TO BE MADE
The fruits of their labour soon became obvious.
Australia played the Netherlands in a friendly in Rotterdam that was anything but.
Manchester United and Real Madrid striker Ruud van Nistelrooy opened the scoring for the hosts in the ninth minute.
Tim Cahill then equalised shortly after half time, but the takeaway from the match was not the goals scored in the 1-1 draw.
Luke Wilshire was sent off basically on the hour mark for a bad tackle on Giovanni van Bronckhorst.
The then-Barcelona left back was carried off the pitch and it thought he may miss the World Cup.
The incident sent a message, however.
“Hiddink wanted his team to be tough as nails,” Smithies recalled.
“To play good football and not to be intimidated by anyone.
“They showed that against Holland.”
With that statement made, the Australians crossed the border and played one final friendly against Liechtenstein.
A scrappy 3-1 win with Mile Sterjovksi, Josh Kennedy and John Aloisi scoring goals sowed fresh doubts in the minds of onlookers, however.
But it did not dismay the playing group, who moved camp to the town of Öhringen in southern Germany.
Öhringen has a population of less than 25,000 people and as Archie Thompson recalled “there wasn’t much going on”.
But it was chosen because of its privacy, and the location meant the team could travel to all of their group games by bus.
The team stayed at the ‘Wald and Schloss hotel Freidrichsruhe’ – an old castle that had been transformed into a hotel.
While they trained at the nearby Otto-Meister Stadium in Öhringen.
“The locals really took to them,” Smithies recalled. “The players went to civic receptions and met the mayor.
“People were always trying to watch training and that kind of thing.”
It was not just locals trying to get up close and personal with the Socceroos, however.
Whether it was in Öhringen or back home in Australia, fans wanted a piece of the action.
“The internet was probably a little bit in its infancy back in 2006,” Covic recalled.
Irankunda booked after Xhaka incident | 00:44
“You didn’t have your smartphones back then, so we had the internet set up at the hotel.
“We had access to a Football Australia messaging site. Every day you could go on and see the messages that were sent to you personally and the squad. That was constant.
“You’d just have random people back in Australia messaging you wishing you the best and saying we’re up for it.
“You knew that this was something different than ever before.
“There was no doubt in our head that we had the whole country behind us.
“We felt it through the internet. We felt it at the games. We felt it at the hotel in rural, countryside Germany where at the front gates there was always a pile of up people hoping for an autograph.”
Alongside the optimism, there was also a major sense of the unknown surrounding the Socceroos.
Australia had never even scored a goal at a World Cup.
In just their second trips to the global showpiece, it was obvious that Hiddink had the pieces at his disposal, but no one was certain they would come together.
“What I remember most about that build-up was a sense of not knowing what was going to happen,” Smithies said.
“You had one of the best coaches in the world. You had this squad of players who were playing at the highest level – Viduka, Lucas Neill, Mark Schwarzer, Harry Kewell playing in the Premier League.
“You had Vince Grella and Mark Bresciano playing in Serie A in Italy. John Aloisi playing in La Liga.
“You had all these top-quality players and this top-quality coach, but you still had this sense of the unknown.
“Australia had underachieved so much to that point. There had been this sort of mental block.”
Keep an eye on foxsports.com.au for the next part of the Socceroos 2006 World Cup rewind series!
