The pathway to 2026 has already been mapped out, with Asia filling eight-and-a-half spots in an expanded 48 team field at the tournament co-hosted by Canada, Mexico and the US.

The seeded Socceroos, with feted head coach Graham Arnold likely in harness for a second four-year term, are hot favourites to qualify for a sixth successive World Cup off the back of reaching the last 16 in Qatar, where it took eventual winners Argentina to dislodge them.

Though an announcement on Arnold’s future is still pending, his stocks are soaring and in the interests of cohesion and continuity atop the national team pyramid, retaining the 59-year-old will be Football Australia chief James Johnson’s first order of business in 2023.

Once a new contract is inked, the plot line for 2026 can be written with Australia’s campaign beginning in October with two qualifiers, two more in November and a further two in March 2024 as the AFC unfurls nine groups of four teams.

Sandwiched between that is January’s delayed Asian Cup to be hosted by Qatar.

The top two teams from each World Cup group qualify for the next phase which kicks off in September 2024 with the field whittled down to three groups of six teams and the highest ranked teams kept apart.

The two top finishers from each group qualify directly for the World Cup whilst the three third placed teams and the best fourth placed nation face sudden-death duels. The two winners also qualify.

The losers face an additional playoff for the right to play South American opposition for the last remaining spot.

All of which means Australia could conceivably play up to 20 games, though with the expanded format automatic qualification seems the most likely outcome after the playoff drama of the last two World Cup campaigns.

The Socceroos will likely to play a September friendly overseas in preparation for the qualifiers.

Should Arnold remain in situ he will look to broaden his influence over all the age groups from the under-17s up to maximise the mining of all available talent pathways to unearth another generation of talent.

He would also seek to enhance ties and cooperation between the A-League and the national team over a broad range of issues including potentially increasing the number of games in the competition and a possible realignment of the calendar.

After piloting Australia through to Qatar off the back of Covid restrictions and a campaign which saw the Socceroos play the majority of their qualifiers on foreign soil, Arnold will have - in theory at least - a far less traumatic path this time round, assuming his new deal is rubber-stamped this month.

Arnold spent Christmas in the UK but is due back in Sydney this week to thrash out his future.