Three months after the Socceroos' best World Cup campaign, the majority of the squad who competed in Qatar will return to Australia for a two-game "welcome home" series against Ecuador in Sydney on March 24 and Melbourne on March 28.
With almost all of the players immediately returning to their respective clubs around the world following their Round of 16 defeat to eventual winners Argentina, this will be the first opportunity for the Australia-based fans who flocked to live sites around the country to celebrate the Socceroos' achievements.
"It's just fantastic to get back on the field again in these games, against a nation that was just at the World Cup," head coach Graham Arnold said.
"These two games are an opportunity for the boys to actually feel the worth of what they did from the nation.
"For myself, I've been back in Australia for six or seven weeks, but people are still patting me on the back and telling me the experiences they had during the World Cup.
"Nearly all of our boys, straight after the Argentina game, flew back to Europe, flew back to their clubs, went straight back to work and didn't really get an opportunity to celebrate their success.
"Straight away, it's going to be a great test for us, and obviously a great opportunity for the public to get out there and thank the players and everyone else involved with what we achieved."
But while the series against the nation ranked 41 in the world is primarily designed to acknowledge the 26 players who made history last year, it also marks the first international window of Arnold's next four-year cycle after his Qatar campaign was rewarded with a contract extension earlier this year.
Their first major test comes in the form of 2026 World Cup qualifiers, which begin in November, followed soon afterwards by the delayed 2023 AFC Asian Cup, which will be hosted in Qatar between January 12 and February 10 next year.
"This is a new start," Arnold said.
"This is a new campaign. This is giving the boys the first opportunity to impress and show us what they have moving forward.
"Day one, when they come into camp, they'll be told they're getting the first chance to get on that clean sheet of paper for selection. It'll be explained to them how the World Cup campaign for this next [cycle] works with 48 teams, and also our three main goals over the next three-and-a-half years.
"It's about achieving something more special. I said, right at the start of my campaign in 2018 — and I got laughed at — that we will be the greatest Socceroos team in history.
"That's going to be the main goal again: achieving more than what we did in Qatar as a group of players. Starting from this camp in March."
As part of Arnold's new-look role, he will have greater involvement with Australia's youth national teams, including the Olyroos, who he guided through the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Former assistant coach Tony Vidmar will now head up the under-23s team permanently, with Arnold yet to choose a successor to join him in the senior set-up. The Olyroos' first Asian qualifiers for the 2024 Paris Olympics are also yet to be finalised.
Several of those players — as well as many others scattered around the world, some of whom have dual Australian passports — are on Arnold's immediate radar, with senior players such as Harry Souttar, who recently secured a move to Premier League club Leicester City ("it brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?" Arnold smiled), a prime example of the pathway and scouting network he and his staff are aiming to strengthen.
"If you look back on nearly every Olympic campaign since the 90s… out of each campaign, you get seven or eight players that go and play 50-plus games for the Socceroos afterwards," he said.
"I will be watching very, very closely the Olympic team under Tony Vidmar, and sometimes being on board with him ... to drive the same message as I did in Tokyo: you're only one step away from being where Harry Souttar is. This is your journey. This is your start.
"So it's very important that we give them the preparation that's required."
With question marks around the status of a handful of Socceroos for the upcoming Ecuador friendlies, including Mathew Leckie, Ajdin Hrustic, and Martin Boyle, Arnold could call upon some emerging youth players to fill the gaps.
However, that Arnold continues to cast his Socceroos net worldwide comes as yet another reminder that Australia's own pathways are lagging behind when it comes to providing opportunities for the country's next generation of players.
Singling out a handful of overseas-based players and remarking upon how rapidly they had progressed since leaving the A-League Men, Arnold once again called upon the Australian Professional Leagues, as well as the administrators of the proposed National Second Division, which is set to be introduced next year, to come up with structural answers that will develop future Socceroos so that constantly looking abroad is no longer necessary.
"It's still something that needs to happen in Australia: these kids are still not playing enough minutes," he said.
"I did the Performance Gap data document a couple of years ago, and [match minutes for young players] picked up a bit, but now it's gone back down again.
"Not enough kids are getting enough game-time in the A-League. I've said this before: only 26 rounds in the A-League is nowhere near enough.
"You can see the difference with Keanu Baccus, Cam Devlin; these guys that were playing in the A-League only a year or two years ago, who've gone from playing 26 rounds a year to going to Scotland and playing 40, 48 games. Look where they are today, physically and technically.
"If the system's not working — the pathways to bring the kids through — and, at the moment, I do believe that it's not working at 100 per cent, these kids need to play. And if they've been born in Australia… and then if their parents moved back overseas, or if they can get an Australian passport through a grandmother, whatever it is, we'd be stupid not to look at it."
Due to cost of living pressures, both state governments have agreed to discounted tickets for the Ecuador series, which will go on sale to the general public from 9am AEST on Monday March 6, starting from $20 for adults and $10 for kids.
The following month, the Socceroos will face England at Wembley, while the Matildas will take on the Lionesses in the same window.
One dollar from every ticket sold for the "welcome home" series will be donated to the Pararoos, Australia's national men's football team for athletes with cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury, or symptoms of stroke.
