Cahill is fast becoming an expert on time zones and jet-lag and his next big trip will see him board the plane to Bangkok for the Socceroos’ Asian Cup debut, when they take on Oman on July 8.

After a successful World Cup, Australia is one of the early favourites to win the Asian Cup. Cahill however, despite a comfortable qualifying stage which saw Australia finish top of a group that included Bahrain and Kuwait, isn’t getting carried away. “We’re under a lot of pressure,” says the midfielder, who knows a bit about Asian opposition after putting two stunning goals past Japan in the World Cup.

“The biggest thing that people need to understand and be educated about is that there are a lot of Asian countries that have a good pedigree,” says Cahill. “Look at South Korea when Guus Hiddink was in charge of them. Japan and China are also good sides and we’ve got a lot of respect for them.

“Asian sides are usually very technical. When we played Bahrain in Sydney they were very good technically and were very difficult to break down. We won the match but it wasn’t easy and they gave us a few problems,” he admits. “It’s going to be really tough – we can definitely win the competition but only if we take the competition seriously.”

The group stage sounds easy enough: Oman, Iraq and one of the four host countries of the Asian Cup, Thailand, don’t exactly strike fear into their opponents’ hearts.

The only problem is that very little is known about any of these teams and that’s something that Cahill admits to being concerned about.

“When you don’t know anything about the team you’re playing it’s so much harder,” Cahill explains. “We’ll be watching videos of our opponents but basically they’re an unknown quantity and they could have a star player who pops up out of nowhere and does something amazing.

“Graham Arnold and the rest of his team back in Australia are doing their homework and feeding us information on each team and we need to do that. If we stay focused and professional we’ll do well and I’m really excited.”