Third-generation Socceroo Alex Robertson has been included in Australia\u2019s squad for friendlies against Canada and the USA, ending an almost two-year standoff.<\/p>\n
Cardiff City midfielder Robertson, a talented playmaker, was last selected in October 2023 under Graham Arnold and has two caps.<\/p>\n
He is also eligible to play for Peru, Scotland and England and was recently tipped to switch allegiances to Peru.<\/p>\n
During Robertson\u2019s absence from the national team, Popovic made it clear on multiple occasions the youngster had made himself unavailable for selection.<\/p>\n
But relationships seem to have thawed and the 22-year-old will now get a chance to show his wares in camp and push to play in friendlies against Canada in Montreal on 10 October and the US in Colorado five days later.<\/p>\n
Robertson is one of eight changes to the squad that played New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper and captain Mat Ryan returns, having joined Spanish top-flight club Levante UD since his most recent Socceroos appearance, joining Paul Izzo and Joe Gauci among the shotstoppers.<\/p>\n
Jason Geria (Albirex Niigata), Daniel Arzani (Ferencvaros) and Mitch Duke (Machida Zelvia) are also back for the first time since contributing to the Socceroos\u2019 direct World Cup qualification in June.<\/p>\n
Nicholas D\u2019Agostino (Viking FK) and Cameron Devlin (Hearts) earn their first call-ups since Popovic took charge in 2024.<\/p>\n
D\u2019Agostino had a breakout season under Popovic at Melbourne Victory and will jostle with Mohamed Toure for a starting striker role.<\/p>\n
Defender Fran Karacic (Hajduk Split) returns after he was ruled out of the September international window due to injury.<\/p>\n
Australia’s coach Tony Popovic said the Socceroos\u2019 sole focus is World Cup preparation. Photograph: Trevor Collens\/AP<\/p>\n
Noah Botic, Tom Glover, Jack Iredale, Anthony Kalik, Nicolas Milanovic, Adrian Segecic, Samuel Silvera and Ryan Teague drop out from the squad that played New Zealand.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Australia Sport<\/p>\n Get a daily roundup of the latest sports news, features and comment from our Australian sports desk<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Former Sydney FC star Segecic can count himself unlucky after scoring for Championship club Portsmouth against Irankunda\u2019s Watford this week.<\/p>\n \u201cThe September window was a good step forward for us,\u201d Popovic said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to keep building continuity and momentum towards the World Cup, a process that began last October.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a privilege to face two World Cup hosts in Canada and the USA, both quality opposition. This will give us a taste of what to expect at next year\u2019s tournament \u2013 one of the advantages of qualifying directly.<\/p>\n \u201cOur focus remains on preparing diligently for the World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n Australia<\/strong>: Joe Gauci, Paul Izzo, Mat Ryan; Jordan Bos, Cameron Burgess, Alessandro Circati, Milos Degenek, Jason Geria, Fran Karacic, Hayden Matthews, Lewis Miller, Kye Rowles; Max Balard, Cameron Devlin, Ajdin Hrustic, Connor Metcalfe, Aiden O\u2019Neill, Alex Robertson, Patrick Yazbek; Daniel Arzani, Martin Boyle, Mitch Duke, Nicholas D\u2019Agostino, Nestory Irankunda, Mohamed Toure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Third-generation Socceroo Alex Robertson has been included in Australia\u2019s squad for friendlies against Canada and the USA, ending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-470136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115308252688849738","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}