Top pro Popovic can 'maximise' Socceroos: Cahill

With automatic World Cup qualification on a knife's edge, Tim Cahill knows as well as anyone how fine a margin it is between the Socceroos booking a ticket to 2026 or missing out altogether.

But as the Australian football great sees it, there are few people better equipped to handle the heat than his old teammate Tony Popovic.

Australia has four qualifiers left in the current round: Indonesia in Sydney, China in Hangzhou, Japan in Perth then Saudi Arabia away.

Japan (16 points) are runaway leaders in group C, with Australia second on seven points, and Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and China all on six.

The top two teams qualify directly for 2026, with third and fourth heading into another round of qualifiers.

Cahill backed his 2006 World Cup teammate to take the reins in 2013, when Ange Postecoglou ultimately won the role. He has no doubt Popovic is even more qualified now.

"Tony, I played with him. He's a great guy," Cahill told AAP at the SportNXT conference in Melbourne.

"He's definitely got a big challenge on his shoulders, and I wish him all the very best.

"He's been a professional. He's been a great coach, he's an even better guy, and he's going to be tested, because that's the nature of the job.

"He has a good talent pool of players but when you look at the likes of Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, these countries in Asia, they're on par, if not some of them are better, and that's just the reality of the way football's going.

"You see Qatar winning Asian Cups back to back. You see the results that have happened already in the qualifiers for a lot of us.

"So I wish him all the very best, but he's a good coach and a good guy, and it'll take time for him to implement his style and to get used to the group, because you don't get the players long enough, and there's not enough training time.

"But he'll maximise, and hopefully he does well."

One of the enduring questions around the Socceroos concerns their next first-choice No.9.

Just-dropped Mitch Duke was Graham Arnold's mainstay while Adam Taggart and Kusini Yengi have been tested.

Untried youngsters Noah Botic and Archie Goodwin are making their case in the A-League Men.

Cahill isn't sure who can step up yet - but knows what it takes.

"It comes from pathways, comes from your league, comes from players playing overseas," he said.

"The next striker is hopefully just playing consistently, scoring goals for his club.

"If you're doing that, then you can score goals for your country."

Cahill was delighted to see the Young Socceroos' recent triumph at the U20 Asian Cup and hoped to see more young compatriots kick on to bigger things.

When he was at Everton, several Socceroos were in the Premier League.

Now just Ipswich Town's Cam Burgess and Massimo Luongo are in England's top flight - although plenty of locals have earned transfers abroad.

But Cahill says that's not the be-all and end-all.

"For me, it's about playing at the highest level you can if you're good enough, whether it's playing in Europe or whether it's playing in the Premier League," he said.

"As long as they're playing professionally and playing games which will allow them to be good enough to play for the national team, then that's the focus.

"I'm not sure there's many Aussies left in the Premier League, but hopefully there will be more, because it's the biggest league in the world."