Australia have suffered a close loss to France and registered a draw with Denmark, matching both highly-ranked teams for the full 90 minutes.

The displays have caught the eye of the footballing world, with Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio one noted fan.

“I profoundly admire Australia as a country – what they do in order to recover their players and how they compete honestly and transparently," Osorio told reporters.

“In some cases they seem like rugby players playing football: they are gentlemanly, they don’t go into personal fights, they fight every single ball with all they’ve got. I think they are one of the great surprises of the Cup."

Asked about Osorio's comments today, Leckie said some had probably written-off the Socceroos before the tournament had even started.

"We have definitely put in two really good performances that probably no one would have expected," he said.

"Although we've only picked up a point, I think the performances deserved more. I guess, we were probably a write-off before the tournament started, no one knew anything about our team, especially those that aren't in our group because it's not important to them.

"It's always nice to get praise from other coaches and teams to say that they're surprised about how we're playing. But we knew that we would be better than what everyone expected.

"We prepared really well for this tournament and tactically we've been very disciplined and we know exactly what we want to do.

"I think in both games of the tournament it's worked very well. It's always nice to get praise, but at the end of the day we've still got a job to do and that's to get three points to try and get through to the next round."