In a whirlwind visit headlined by a Donald Trump-dominated draw, Socceroos coach Tony Popovic got a taste of the chaos that awaits at the 2026 World Cup.
Now he has to tackle the wild, wild west coast.
Popovic, 52, experienced the full bells and whistles in his first World Cup draw as Socceroos boss on Friday (Saturday morning AEDT).
That included a lengthy ceremony, four musical numbers and the US president taking centre stage.
To top it off, world No.26 Australia were drawn against hosts the USA, along with Paraguay and a European play-off winner: either Turkey, Romania, Slovakia or Kosovo.
Popovic's online press conference with Australian media started an hour late as he was unable to leave the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC until after the president departed.
"You always imagine, people tell you the US do everything bigger and better than everyone else. Today, I got it first hand. I was a witness to it all," Popovic said, laughing.
"They do everything on a grand scale and this draw was done on a grand scale.
"The last couple of days here at the hotel has been crazy, so busy, so much going on and then the draw itself was everything that I expected.
"And now I'm here in front of the capital, doing an interview previously live on the TV.
"So it's real. They certainly make it real and grand. And that's how I expect the World Cup to be."
Now, Popovic's team will get down to business: planning their base and pre-tournament friendlies, working back from their June 13 opener in Vancouver.
"We're in a good place. There's some work to do, but nothing excessive," he said.
"We've got some good plans that we have in place.
"With the staff that we have, and we've got a lot of people here with a lot of experience at World Cups - a lot more than me obviously - in the preparation phase now, and they're confident that we'll get everything that we want in terms of being ready for the game."
Australia had eyed a base on the east coast or the central US, anticipating hot weather or altitude.
Instead, they will face "cooler conditions" in Vancouver, Seattle and Santa Clara and could consider a nearby base.
Some staff will stay back to secure the best possible pre-tournament and base camps, with Popovic confident of having "most things finalised" in the next week or two.
"We've initially always thought that we'd try and stay somewhere central America with our training due to the conditions there," he said.
"But we'll look into it, because we've got maybe at least five hours of travel by plane if we do that. So we may have to look at some other options, which we've already seen, on the west coast.
"I don't think it'll be an issue. It's more about what do we need to do, where do we need to be, to be best prepared for the World Cup?
"And to make sure that when that first game comes, also that we're not feeling as though we're over the hill and coming down because we're fatigued.
"We need to be really firing and with a lot more left in the tank come the first game."
