FFA CEO David Gallop acknowledged the situation after new Australia boss Bert van Marwijk voiced his preference to train rather than play friendlies at Thursday morning’s press conference in Sydney.

There are also concerns about the travel toll on the Socceroos players who are largely based in Europe, if they were to return to Australia before the Russia tournament.

Australia's friendlies against Norway and Colombia in Oslo and London respectively in March are during the only FIFA international window on the calendar prior to the squad getting together in the lead-up to the World Cup.

The Socceroos have previously played farewell friendlies against Greece in Melbourne (2006), New Zealand in Melbourne (2010) and South Africa in Sydney (2014).

All three matches attracted crowds of more than 50,000, with the Greece friendly attracting 95,103 fans.

The scene from the 2006 farewell match vs Greece

However, the constraints of time, the geography of the bulk of the current Socceroos squad and Van Marwijk’s need to get to know his squad has FFA weighing up their options ahead of the 2018 World Cup.

“We’ve had some reasonably preliminary discussions with Bert about that,” Gallop aid.

“We do have some options for a farewell game in Australia but we’re in no way locked into anything.

“We will work through that over the next few weeks.

“Obviously it’d be wonderful to have a big farewell game back on home soil but we’d need to have the commercial return for it to make sense.

“We’d need quality opposition that’s good for the preparation for Russia.

“Those things we don’t have in place at this point. It’s a long way to bring the team, who mostly are already in Europe, back. We have to be cognizant of that.

“The picture I’m painting for you is there’s a range of factors that need to be worked through before we can confirm whether we’ll have a home farewell game or not.”

Gallop and van Marwijk arrive at Thursday's press conference

Earlier, van Marwijk made clear his preference to spend time with his squad in training rather than playing friendlies, as he attempts to get to know his players and impose his methods ahead of the World Cup.

He acknowledged the Socceroos were bound to March friendlies against Norway and Colombia, but would have a say in any potential farewell match in Australia.

“Training is very important for me,” van Marwijk said.

“I like to train because then you can improve the team and the players. A lot of countries play a lot of friendly games.

“When I can make a decision, I would not play a lot of friendly games. I’d train more.”