Behich played twice for Ange Postecoglou\u2019s side when the Australians won the title on home soil nine years ago and the 33-year-old hopes starting the current campaign with a win over India on Saturday will serve as a positive omen for further success.
\n\u201cI was part of the team that lifted the trophy in 2015 and it\u2019s always been on my mind that I\u2019d like to do it again,\u201d the Melbourne City left-back said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way we\u2019ve started with a win is always important. We started the last campaign with a loss (in 2019 against Jordan) and it made it difficult for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to go game by game, we\u2019re putting (the India win) behind us and the full focus is on Syria. We go into every game to win and it\u2019s going to be no different tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Australians are appearing in their fifth AFC Asian Cup since joining the confederation in 2006, with the country reaching the final in 2011 before winning the title four years later.<\/p>\n
Arnold is overseeing Australia\u2019s AFC Asian Cup involvement for a third time, having seen his team exit at the quarter-final stage in both 2007 and 2019, but Behich believes the former Sydney FC coach has given the current team a robust platform upon which they can build.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe work on defending as a team and I think when we press or are in a block we make sure we\u2019re compact and make it difficult for the opposition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince Arnie has come in we\u2019ve improved on that a lot. When you come into a tournament everything changes compared to a friendly game or club football. It\u2019s a one-off game, we\u2019ve got to be switched on every minute of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst India we did that very well. We know as a defence if we do our job we\u2019ve got enough quality to punish teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Victory in their opening game lifted any early pressure off Arnold\u2019s team while the Syrians will go into the meeting at Jassim bin Hamad Stadium hoping to show a marked improvement from their 0-0 draw against Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n
And while that result has increased scrutiny on Hector Cuper\u2019s side, defender Aiham Ousou is unfazed by the attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe live with the pressure, this is what we do every day,\u201d said the Sweden-born defender. \u201cWe are well prepared mentally and physically. I don\u2019t feel any pressure. We take it day by day and game by game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re excited to be here to play these games. Tomorrow\u2019s game is very exciting, we play against – on paper – the top team in our group. It\u2019s a challenge and in football anything is possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some tactics to work on but we have good players and have good coaches. We believe in having a good game and a good result and hope we can show it tomorrow as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Behich played twice for Ange Postecoglou\u2019s side when the Australians won the title on home soil nine years ago and the 33-year-old hopes starting the current campaign with a win over India on Saturday will serve as a positive omen for further success. \u201cI was part of the team that lifted the trophy in 2015 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":929697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20967],"tags":[3733,28042],"class_list":["post-929696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afc-news","tag-afc","tag-afc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/929697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}