Tim Cahill is out of the shadows for Australia

Tim Cahill’s career has coincided with a rise in Australia’s fortunes on the world stage. He has scored the most goals for his country as a midfielder. Paul Gilham / Getty Images

An off-stage moment from last year’s World Cup.

A woman in her 60s walks into a shop in Fortaleza where, in the corner, a small television is showing highlights from the group phase of the tournament.

As one of the best goals fills the screen, the commentator’s voice rises in excitement.

The shopper looks up in time to see a sweetly connected volley, directed from 20 metres or more from goal, left to right and in off the crossbar.

The celebrating team wear yellow shirts and green shorts.

“Are Brazil playing right now?” asks the woman, a little confused. “No,” smiles a man at the cashier’s desk, “this lot are just dressed like Brazil. Anyway, Brazil don’t score goals as good as that any more.”

By the year’s end, that goal was a nominee for the best scored anywhere in 2014 for the Fifa Puskas award.

Tim Cahill’s wondrous volley against the Netherlands was well worth interrupting the shopping to watch and, certainly, no Brazilian scored a goal that looked quite so “Brazilian” during the World Cup.

Come the end of the Asian Cup, Cahill’s overhead bicycle kick against China, one of the two goals he struck in the quarter-final to bring Australia to today’s meeting with the UAE, will rank close to the volley in Brazil in the extensive highlights packages compiled to honour his international career.

Cahill, 34, expects this to be his last major tournament for Australia and, being the driven, competitive individual he is, he envisages lifting the continental championship next weekend as his satisfying closure.

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Australians used to engage in lively debates whether the evergreen, versatile Cahill, or the former Liverpool winger Harry Kewell was the greatest “Socceroo”, of all time.

The argument has now closed firmly in Cahill’s favour, but, when it lasted, it would stray into various areas, including club achievements.

Kewell played on the winning Liverpool team in a Uefa Champions League final, whereas Cahill, now of MLS club New York Red Bull, spent most of his career at Everton, trophy-free.

When it came to commitment and contribution to the national cause, Cahill always had huge popular support, more than Kewell, and his effervescence also endeared him to ­compatriots.

The Cahill goal celebrations are a unique trademark, typically a run to the corner flag, which he jabs at as if it were a boxer’s punchbag.

On another occasion, a gesture after scoring put him in trouble. Playing for Everton, he put his wrists together as if in handcuffs – a sign to one of his brothers who had been jailed for a serious assault.

Cahill is from a sporting family. Two brothers played football professionally and several cousins have won international honours at both rugby codes.

But Cahill had to battle to represent his native Australia.

The son of an English father and a Samoan mother, he was born in Sydney but represented Samoa, the country his younger brother would captain, at under-20 level when just 14.

That meant he had to wait until he was 21, and a change in the Fifa statutes on eligibility, to play for another country.

He could have chosen England, or Ireland, where a grandparent was born, but plumped for the land of his birth.

Cahill’s career with Australia coincided with a rise in the national team’s fortunes, and he helped them reach successive World Cup tournaments from 2006 to 2014.

He scored goals in each of those finals and is his country’s record marksman: his strikes against China, on his 80th cap, were the 38th and 39th for his country.

Yet look up Cahill’s designation as a footballer and it will probably have midfielder next to his name.

It should say all-rounder.

His natural athleticism and sharp reading of the game has made him an exemplary attacking midfielder.

At Everton, Cahill evolved into a superbly effective “false nine”, a withdrawn centre-forward, long before false nine became fashionable in the jargon.

His ability to time late runs into the penalty area, coupled with his strength in the air, explains much of that fine goalscoring record.

Policing his movement around the penalty area must be a priority for the UAE in Newcastle.

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