Popovic: Swiss friendly a 'dress rehersal' for Socceroos' USMNT clash

          • Joey Lynch
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              Joey Lynch is a Melbourne-based sports journalist and AYA cancer advocate. Primarily working on football, he has covered the Socceroos, Matildas and A-Leagues for ESPN for over a decade.
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          Jun 5, 2026, 11:33 PM ET

          SAN DIEGO, California -- Socceroos boss Tony Popovic believes a final pre-FIFA World Cup friendly against Switzerland will provide his side with the perfect dress rehearsal for their looming clash with the United States - Saturday's hitout mirroring the circumstances of their Group D showdown with the USMNT.

          Now well-settled into their World Cup training base in Oakland, Australia's players made the short flight to San Diego on Friday to prepare for their meeting with the Swiss, which will take place at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday at noon local time (Sunday 5am AEST).

          Defeating Asian Cup finalists Jordan 4-1 last week, the 19th-ranked Nationalmannschaft will present a stiff test for the Australians, one Popovic said he was eagerly awaiting and hopes to use to experiment with a few ideas ahead of their World Cup opener against Türkiye, as well as get further minutes into some players' legs. Cristian Volpato could make his debut in the fixture after making a sensational switch from Italy, while towering striker Tete Yengi could also get his first cap.

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          However, the famously detail-oriented coach and his staff have also made the trip with one eye on their meeting with the United States in a fortnight. That's because Saturday's game will almost exactly replicate the circumstances that they'll face when they clash with Mauricio Pochettino's side on June 19 - flying out of their Bay Area training base the day before, getting into the host city in the afternoon, taking the field for a noon kickoff, and then returning to California on a flight that same evening.

          And that means that everything the Socceroos do ahead of the Swiss exchange -- how they sleep, how they eat, how they study, and more -- will all provide valuable lessons for Seattle.

          "Definitely; players aren't accustomed to this," Popovic said of the learning opportunity. "They're not accustomed to getting up, trying to work out their meals; what time they have them, and how much do they eat to have the energy and the fuel to play a World Cup game at the intensity of a World Cup?

          "So we're very happy to have this match. Switzerland plays all their games at 12, so it suits them perfectly. But with us having the game against the US at 12, it's actually a good dress rehearsal for us with travelling, with food, with training, with our meetings -- we've got a team meeting coming up after this to see how that will work. Do we do that before the US game, get all the meetings out of the way in the evening?

          "We're just trialling a few things to see how that works with the players, and just to make sure that they're clear and calm and focused for the game."

          While Australia will open their World Cup campaign against Türkiye and the United States will do so against Paraguay, the escalating war of words before the two nation's punditry class escalated this week when former UMSNT World Cup representative Alexi Lalas declared on the State of the Union podcast that Australia was "an average team by any measure, and certainly not a great team," and then extolled Popovic to print his comments and stick them on the dressing room wall.

          That followed an exchange between Mark Schwarzer and Mike Grella on CBS Sports, in which the former American youth international was grilled by Australia's most capped male player of all-time over his comments that the Socceroos represented a "lay-up" for the hosts.

          It's all generating plenty of excitement and hype that promises to only build in the weeks ahead. Australian midfielder Connor Metcalfe, though, is already over it.

          "I've seen all the U.S. stuff, and I'm just sick of it. I just am," he said. "All this talk, let's just wait for the game and whatever happens, happens. It's just so much rubbish. I'm just sick of it. We'll just wait, and we'll play. It'll be a good game, we had a friendly against them, it was tense, it was feisty, and it's probably going to be the exact same."