Australia's projected World Cup starting XI has a connection to England's Raheem Sterling
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Australia's projected World Cup starting XI has a connection to England's Raheem Sterling originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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Australia has a formidable soccer identity, and heading into a 2026 World Cup in which they'll be part of the same group as the host United States, the Socceroos will need it.
"They tend to keep things simple at a World Cup and are very comfortable settling into Australian sport's preferred role of underdog and play on the counter," ESPN Australia's Joey Lynch wrote in a new roster projection on Wednesday. "One only needs to look at what happened in Qatar -- when they stunned Denmark to reach the round of 16 before pushing Argentina all the way -- to see how they can leverage a backs-to-the-wall mentality and their game-breaking individual talents to spring surprises."
Their projected starting XI put together by Lynch in the aforementioned article has a lot of familiar names.
One of the newer guys, though, is the youngster Jordan Bos -- and he's got a fascinating connection to former England star Raheem Sterling.
Bos is 23 years old and plays on the left side of the pitch -- with Lynch projecting him for a wingback role in Australia's World Cup starting eleven.
His club football is where Sterling comes into play. Bos suits up for Feyenoord in the Dutch Eredivisie.
Nominally, Bos is a left back, a defensive player.
But late in the season in the Netherlands, he was starting as the Feyenoord left winger en route to a second-place finish. The player being left on the bench in favor of Bos: Sterling.
Sterling clearly has fallen a long way since his glory days in England, and the fact that a defender was starting over him in the Eredivisie just about sums it up.
But in another way, it's a bit of a changing of the guard. A young player, in this case the Australian Bos, comes into the lineup. An older player in decline, Sterling, moves out.
That experience will certainly matter for Bos as he heads to North America for the World Cup.