\n<\/p>\n
Tony Popovic has declared teenage Manchester United sensation James Overy a chance to make the Socceroos\u2019 World Cup squad next year, even though he is yet to play a competitive senior match.<\/p>\n
The highly-touted full-back only turned 18 on Sunday but is now training regularly with the Premier League club\u2019s first team.<\/p>\n
Popovic selected Overy for this week\u2019s friendlies against Venezuela and Colombia as the Socceroos continue to prepare for next year\u2019s World Cup in North America.<\/p>\n
The right-back, who has also played as a winger and on the left side of defence, impressed in two matches for the Australian Under-20 side in last month\u2019s World Cup in Chile.<\/p>\n
Popovic said those appearances made him consider bringing Overy into the senior set-up, despite his lack of first team experience, and he has subsequently received positive feedback from Manchester United coaches.<\/p>\n
Although Popovic said the coming matches were partly focused on developing the Socceroos\u2019 depth, he is not ruling out picking Overy as a World Cup bolter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just thought he\u2019s worth having a look at, and let\u2019s see,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m very open-minded with what that looks like for the immediate future and obviously long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overy is now training regularly with the first team at Carrington under Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, he\u2019s in a very good moment, and I hope he comes in here and \u2013 we\u2019ll do everything we can to make him feel comfortable \u2013 that he expresses himself on the field, is not too nervous, and he just comes out and plays and does what he loves doing,\u201d Popovic said.<\/p>\n
Overy was Australia\u2019s youngest player in Chile, and played left-back in the second match against Argentina and his preferred position in the third fixture, a 3-1 win over Cuba. He set up Australia\u2019s first goal with a through ball for Max Caputo.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Sign up to Sport in Focus<\/span><\/p>\n Sign up to Sport in Focus<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWatching him closely in Chile, I was impressed,\u201d Popovic said. \u201cWe have good contacts at Man U [United], so we know what he\u2019s doing at training, we know how much he trains, how much he trains with the first team. He\u2019s getting games with the under 18s, the under 21s, and he\u2019s in the process where he\u2019s getting called [to first team training] up a lot more often.\u201d<\/p>\n Overy played for United\u2019s Under-18s in a 0-0 draw on the weekend. Popovic said the club\u2019s staff have a development programme for him, which includes training with the first team, to \u201cget his minutes up\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have a plan with him, like they do with all their youngsters, but he\u2019s Australian and we\u2019re delighted with the progress he\u2019s making,\u201d Popovic said. \u201cWe can see the physical gains he\u2019s making in terms of his loading at training, and how well he\u2019s adapting to that and the rigours of a Premier League top club training.\u201d<\/p>\n The Socceroos play Venezuela on 14 November in Houston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tony Popovic has declared teenage Manchester United sensation James Overy a chance to make the Socceroos\u2019 World Cup squad next year, even though he is yet to play a competitive senior match. The highly-touted full-back only turned 18 on Sunday but is now training regularly with the Premier League club\u2019s first team. Popovic selected Overy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[346,130,15027,817,1570,18743,18874,16707,9603,3677,550],"class_list":{"0":"post-32787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-cup","10":"tag-frame","11":"tag-james","12":"tag-manchester","13":"tag-overy","14":"tag-prodigy","15":"tag-socceroos","16":"tag-squad","17":"tag-united","18":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}