By Michael Church
ARLINGTON, Texas, July 3 (Reuters) - Australia coach Tony Popovic wants them to establish themselves among world football's elite in an effort to gain greater respect from officials after seeing his side exit the World Cup in a penalty shootout against Egypt on Friday.
The Australians lost 4-2 on penalties at Dallas Stadium after a 1-1 draw at the end of extra time to miss out for a third time on the country's first win in a knockout round tie at the tournament.
Popovic felt several
key decisions went against his team and stressed the need for the country to become one of the sport's leading lights.
"The only way we can change that is by competing with the elite more often at major tournaments," said Popovic. "By our performances, we should already take a major step.
"We will have to keep doing that to gain the necessary respect, whether that's in this room, whether that's people in general, whether that's officials, whether that's opponents. It could be a range of different areas.
"We're on a path to achieving that and knowing that we will have to earn that."
Australia were appearing at a sixth consecutive World Cup but have now been beaten on three occasions in the knockout rounds, with the loss against Egypt following on from defeats against Italy in 2006 and Argentina four years ago in Qatar.
"We want this to inspire us to do better," he said. "Hopefully we can take a step forward at the Asian Cup, which is coming up for us in January.
"And then in four years' time, let's have bigger targets, bigger expectations. But we also know that being at the World Cup is not easy, firstly to arrive, to qualify.
"If you look at all the nations that don't progress, and all the big nations that haven't had success over a big period of time, we can't take this for granted what we've achieved, and we need to keep growing.
"And hopefully if we get to this point again in four years' time we can take that next step and progress."
Six of the players who started for Australia were 23 or younger, including 18-year-old Lucas Herrington, who hit the crossbar with his side's fourth spot-kick to set up Hossam Abdelmaguid to score the winning penalty for Egypt.
Popovic defended his decision to ask the central defender to take one of the penalties despite his lack of experience.
"He has played the last two games as an 18-year-old," he said. "So if I trust him to play in a game that we needed to get a result against Paraguay, a game where elimination was on the line then what's the difference with the penalty?"
(Reporting by Michael Church, Editing by Toby Davis)
