Australia lose 3-4 to Ecuador in football friendly

London, March 6 (IANS) Despite leading 3-0 at half-time, Australia lost 3-4 to Ecuador in a international football at The Den here.

Australia held a comfortable advantage at the end of first half Wednesday night thanks to Mile Jedinak’s penalty and Tim Cahill’s brace, reports Xinhua.

But Ecuador came out after the break and scored immediately from the penalty spot. They then started dominating the game and exposed a tiring, reshuffled Australian defence.

Enner Valencia equalised with 14 minutes remaining, trickling the ball over the line.

The collapse and comeback was complete in stoppage time with Antonio Valencia supplying Edison Mendez the cross to score in the second minute of added time.

New ‘Socceroos’ captain Mile Jedinak told Australian Fox Sports that he was a bit disappointed with the result.

“We’d done really well until Mitchell Langerak (goalkeeper) got sent off,” he said.

“It’s not the result we were looking for. We can take a lot of positives and a couple of guys on debut gave a really good account of themselves.”

After the match, Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou said the new generation of his team would learn “some useful lessons of what you can and can’t do”.

“We made some mistakes, but as I said it’s a good lesson in what you can and can’t do,” he told Fox Sports.

“I have absolute belief in what our players can do. The first half was very good. They underestimated us a little bit, but ultimately it’s about a 90 minute performance.”