The striker, who scored a trademark header to get the Socceroos back into the game in the first half, claims the Chileans got away with blue murder. 

He accused the world No 14s of poor sportsmanship and said he should have been awarded a penalty when his shirt was clearly tugged on in the penalty area while the much more fancied side should have been reduced to 10 men. 

“As for some of the calls, it was beyond me how we didn’t get some calls,” Cahill said of African ref Noumandiez Doue’s work. “They [Chile] were getting a lot in their favour tonight.”

On the shirt pull, for which a successfully taken penalty would have made the scoreline 2-2, Cahill said players had been told by FIFA that any shenanigans of the sort would be punished. 

“They said it would be dealt with strictly,” Cahill said.

The 34-year-old New York Red Bulls striker was among three Aussies to go into Doue’s book on the night in a bizarre incident where left-back Eugenio Mena elbowed and kicked him but wasn’t reprimanded. 

“The left-back elbowed me and kicked out at me when I was trying to run past him for a cross, and I’ve got the yellow card,” he said. “I called him a cheat and he said ‘Yes, I’m a cheat, so what?’.

Cahill was irate when called offside when he scored another world class header, but replays showed he was just on the wrong side of his defender and the assistant referee was right on the money.

Cahill said Chile’s behaviour became more severe as the game went on and the Aussies continued waves of potentially dangerous counter-attacks. 

“They sensed it, everything started turning into grappling, everything they did started to slow the game down and they were getting a lot of free-kicks in their favour,” he said. “It’s fine, because this is a great learning curve for this team and what we’re trying to do.

“We respect Chile, they’re a great team and they’re going to cause Holland and Spain problems but at the same time, I’d love to play them again in the future.”

Australia were on the back foot from the outset when Chile scored twice in the first 14 minutes, and appeared out of the game until Cahill’s header from a Tommy Oar cross. 

They were gusty throughout and caused the Chileans all kinds of hassles on the break, but lacked the quality – and perhaps experience – to make them pay. 

“Overall, I’m really proud of the boys and their performance. This time last week we were talking about how we were going to create chances. We created the chances tonight but unfortunately, everything seemed to go their way.”