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Australia confident of shocking World Cup holders France in opening game

Doha, Qatar -- Australia attacker Craig Goodwin says that his side will relish their underdog status when they open their 2022 FIFA World Cup campaign against defending champions France, although injury concerns remain around one of the squad's most important attacking threats.

After a staggered arrival, Goodwin and the Socceroos trained as a complete squad for the first time on Tuesday evening.

They were joined by Melbourne City attacker Marco Tilio, who has been brought into the squad as a standby player in case Hibernian winger Martin Boyle is unable to recover from a knee injury that has kept him out of training for the past two days.

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FIFA's World Cup regulations stipulate that teams can replace a player for a medical reason, up to 24 hours before their first game. Coach Graham Arnold, though, is bullish on the prospect of Boyle proving his fitness ahead of Australia's clash with France next Tuesday at the Al Janoub Stadium.

The Socceroos and France also met in their opening game of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, when the eventual champions needed a 58th-minute penalty from Antoine Griezmann and an 80th-minute own goal from Aziz Behich to secure Les Bleus a 2-1 win.

Goodwin wasn't a part of Australia's side in Russia but said that he and his teammates would hold no fear in their re-match with Didier Deschamps' side.

"We just have to take it game by game," he said. "It's very cliche, but that's the only way that we're going to have the chances to progress and to do something.

"We really have to focus on, first and foremost, the France game and just looking at how we can break them down, how we can hurt them and nullify the amount of strengths that they have.

"We have to go into every game with confidence that we've made it this far. There's no point in going into a game scared or with any type of fear. Because if you are going into these games with that mentality, then you're already on the back foot.

"We're used to being in a situation where we are the underdog and I think that suits us. But at the same time, we have to be brave we have to be confident and we have to play with no fear."

Australia booked their place at the World Cup in an intercontinental playoff shootout against Peru, providing a happy ending to a campaign that began with a world record 11-game winning streak only to turn to the point that Arnold's job came under serious threat.

"We've shown along the way to qualifying for this World Cup, we've been written off on many occasions in games and we've been able to get here," Goodwin said.

"So we go in [to the France game] with full confidence. We know that it'll be a tough game. But there's no reason why we can't show up the world."