The Socceroos will go into the tournament without captain Jedinak and veteran Cahill who have both retired from international football.

But Meulensteen is confident the national team has the cover.

"We need to look ahead and that’s what we’ve done,” Graham Arnold's assistant told Gulf News.

“Graham has got a clear view and a good idea about young and upcoming players, those guys have to step in, and the other seniors still available in the squad have to step up. It’s exciting more than anything.

"We have a good mixture of players, some of whom were part of the team that won the Asian Cup in 2015, but also a lot that weren’t. The key is to make sure that the ones that were, sort of excite the others to expect and achieve the same thing.

"We have to set out with that [retaining the Asian Cup title] in mind, and approach those games with that expectation — to get out of the group and take every opponent as it comes."

The Socceroos face Kuwait in a friendly on Tuesday morning, 3:30am (AEDT).

"We expect the players to implement what we’ve been working on in this camp in that game," Meulensteen said.

"Practically this has been a good place to come because a lot of our players are based in Europe, it also helps the players get used to everything here as we know we’ll be back here in a few months time."