The Socceroos have to cause an upset of epic proportions to make it out of the group stage of the Confederations Cup in Russia following their 1-1 draw against Cameroon in St Petersberg on Friday morning.

The Socceroos now face a must-win final group match against tournament favourite Chile on Monday morning to have any chance of progressing.

After going down to Germany 3-2 in their opening match earlier this week, Ange Postecoglou’s team needed to regroup and win against Cameroon. Into the starting 11 came Robbie Kruse and Alex Gersbach in place of Massimo Luongo and Aziz Behich. These changes gave Australia momentum going forward particularly in the first half with Gersbach combining well with Rogic down the left flank and Kruse combining well with Leckie on the right. However the Indomitable Lions, with pace and power in the attacking third always looked threatening against the Australian defence and created the better chances of the first half. On the stroke of half-time, Australia conceded the opening goal, when Zambo Anguissa outpaced Milos Degenak to lob over keeper Matt Ryan.

The Socceroos levelled in the 60th-minute through a Mark Milligan penalty conversion after Gersbach’s strong run into the box was halted by a Cameroon challenge.

However it was Cameroon who looked the most likely to score a winner in the remainder of the match and the Socceroos could count themselves lucky that Cameroon striker Aboubakar didn’t have his radar set right, missing several clear-cut chances inside the box to fire his team into the lead.

In the end it was a result which benefitted neither the Socceroos nor Cameroon with each needing wins in their remaining games against Chile and Germany respectively.

After the match, the Socceroos boss told SBS TV, “We controlled large parts of the game. But obviously they were very good in transition. And when they break they are hard to stop at times. But for the most part we controlled the game and we played at our tempo but we’re disappointed at the goal before half-time we conceded.

“Credit to the players. We had less rest than them, they were out on our feet but we still kept going. Sometimes our final ball let us down a little bit. And we lacked a little bit of composure but we got in some good areas. We nullified most of their threats. They are a great team in transition and they caught us out but for the most part the boys did well.”

Postecoglou was full of praise for the performance of Gersbach after his first full game for the Socceroos. “He’s a good kid. And we’ve got some good kids coming through. And Alex is one of them and we’ll keep exposing them at this level,” Postecoglou said of the Rosenborg player.

“And you look at the average age of this team, and this team will be around for a long time.”