Asian Cup semi-final

Australia: 2 (Sainsbury 3, Davidson 14)
United Arab Emirates: 0
Crowd: 21,079 at Hunter Stadium

Australia, meet your new and improved Socceroos, free of the public’s fanciful yearning to be more like our 2006 ‘Golden Generation’.

This generation of players are now comfortable in their own skin.

With seemingly supernatural veterans thrilling, young attackers finding fluency and the emergence of a determined back four, the Socceroos have changed public opinion in quick time – much quicker than you would by giving a knighthood to a British Royal.

• South Korea stroll into Asian Cup final 
• Incredible Cahill sends Socceroos to semis 
• ‘Very, very bad. Our Asian Cup embarrassment

Ange Postecoglou has worked a miracle by taking the Socceroos to the 2015 Asian Cup final the way he has – his team couldn’t win, score or foster any enthusiasm from supporters in their post-World Cup friendlies, but can now do no wrong.

Despite the shock eliminations of Iran and Japan, and the lack of goals conceded by their opponents in Saturday’s final, South Korea, the Socceroos have been the most impressive team at this tournament.

There is a new-found confidence about these Socceroos. Photo: Getty

See reaction and analysis to October’s 2-1 loss to then Asian Cup favourites Japan to gauge just how low spirits were at their most desperate point coming into this competition.

But such vulnerabilities would have seemed fictional to anyone watching this semi-final.

As unlikely goal scorers go they don’t get more obscure than Trent Sainsbury and Jason Davidson, who both had their first national-team strikes within 15 minutes of Australia’s Asian Cup semi-final with the UAE.

The United Arab Emirates haven’t looked rattled often this tournament and their jarring start to the game in Newcastle was a temporary moment of contrast to the swagger they’ve shown the past two weeks.

Even when Japan slammed chance after chance wide of their goal in the quarter-final the young and fearless side had an assured air of confidence that they’d hold out the Samurai Blue.

While in this game scoring was more imperative than defending, that maintenance of fluency under fire continued despite a frantic start by the Socceroos.

Sainsbury jumped unmarked at a corner and headed Australia to a dream start in the third minute of the game. It was his first goal for the Socceroos and was very similar to the chance he missed in the quarter-final.

Then, 11 minutes later left-back Davidson – unable to get a game at his Premier League club West Bromwich Albion – found himself unmarked in the box as a neat Socceroos attack deflected to his feet for him to slide home.

The buffer Australia quickly established proved to be vital given the way they couldn’t totally resist the attacking brilliance of UAE star Omar Abdulrahman. His side threatened the whole game with the fulcrum of their thrusts coming through the number 10.

The ‘Emirati’ initiative never wavered through the 90 minutes but Australia’s resilience was as good as it has been under Postecoglou. This meant the Socceroos weren’t dominant on the night but played well enough to make sure the evening went comfortably.

It is impressive to see a team who can take an early lead and then defend it with poise for the vast majority of the game. In achieving this, Postecoglou has managed to take a side who shipped goals easily to be one who can recognise, adapt to and carry out their defensive responsibilities in any situation.

The coach went to great lengths to emphasise that the team were progressing how he wanted them to even when results were not great. Now with them in an Asian Cup final, hindsight tells us how accurate Ange’s resolve in his methods was.

Trent Sainsbury flies to score his first Socceroos goal. Photo: Getty

Australia will go into the final on Saturday night at ANZ Stadium as the clear favourites to lift the Asian Cup – our first piece of international soccer silverware since a 1967 Friendship Tournament Cup win in war-ravaged Vietnam.

While South Korea have not conceded a goal the whole tournament they’ve not come up against a strike force in the touch of Australia, who rested key players in their meeting earlier in the tournament.

The game will be the biggest soccer match in Australia since that 2005 World Cup qualifying playoff against Uruguay at the same stadium in Sydney.

If we were to lose it would be up there in disappointment with our 1997 World Cup qualifier capitulation to Iran at the MCG – but we’d prefer not to think of that.

That night’s pitch-invading villain Peter Hoare lives in Newcastle though, and he stayed away from the semi-final.

Let’s take that as a good omen for Saturday.