Back in 2024 the Socceroos were in trouble. They'd just lost at home to Bahrain, drew 0-0 with a team ranked 129th, which left them ranked fifth in the Asian region and staring down the barrel of missing the World Cup. That's the position Tony Popovic inherited when he took over the team. Fourteen months later he'd turned their fate around, securing qualification after a historic unbeaten run. How? His success came from relentlessly grinding away at the basics and the same disciplined approach is true in business too.
Popovic didn't rebuild the squad or chase a big marquee signing. He tightened the fundamentals: sharpening defensive structures, demanding better physical preparation, raising fitness standards and enforcing nutrition disciplines. It's the unglamorous, unspectacular work that he knew would produce results in pressure cooker moments.
Seven wins from seven followed and Australia qualified automatically for the first time since 2014. Their World Cup campaign opened with a 2-0 win over Türkiye, fielding ten debutants and controversially benching experienced goalkeeper Maty Ryan. The US game? It's still a little raw, let's leave that one alone.
Popovic took a team that had lost its way and rebuilt it into one delivering elite performances on the biggest stages in world football. Not through a dramatic overhaul, but with disciplined and relentless attention to the small things, done consistently over time. Watching the World Cup in the wee hours of the morning, I keep thinking about the parallels with the CFO's I work with.
Most businesses aren't losing margin because of one big decision that fails spectacularly. They're losing it through hundreds of small ones nobody picked up, whether that's an increase that slipped through, a contract that rolled over without renegotiation, or a category left un-benchmarked because it was never urgent enough.
Popovic said it himself: "There are maybe 20 or 30 things you'd like to talk about and bring, but I think it's important that we have three or four key messages, key points that we're trying to master, in terms of our non-negotiables." Identify a small number of things that genuinely move the EBITDA needle, do them consistently and without exception and don't get distracted by everything else.
Here's what makes this hard to fix: these are all straightforward things for procurement teams to address, but that's exactly why they don't get addressed.
When the consequence of inaction is invisible this month, this quarter or even this year, the default is almost always to focus on whatever is more pressing.
The supplier who puts through a modest increase every year isn't unusual. They're doing what's easy for them and if it's equally easy for you not to notice, they'll keep doing it. If no one on your side is doing the small and disciplined work of checking, that's a procurement governance gap and the EBITDA sitting uncaptured is significant.
Popovic didn't win seven straight by accident. He built a system around the small things, because elite performance is built on the one percenters, not the big glory moments. The discipline was in the consistency, never the ambition. And the results…well they simply followed on from that.
The CFO's I work with don't protect margin by running big one-off cost programs that consume the business and create internal friction. They do it the same way Popovic did, with structured reviews, real benchmarks and disciplined governance built into how the business operates. Because the businesses that make the small things non-negotiable are the ones where value compounds quietly over time.