Daniel Arzani is running again and could be back in the Caltex Socceroos fold before the end of 2019, according to head coach Graham Arnold.
Arzani, 20, ruptured his ACL in November 2018 during his Scottish Premiership debut for Celtic.
It saw the on-loan Manchester City starlet miss the rest of the campaign.
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But in a teleconference on Friday, Arnold gave a promising update on Arzani’s road to recovery.
“Daniel is running. He’s pretty much up to training point,” Arnold said ahead of Australia's friendly against Korea Republic on Friday 7 June.
“The same with him and Martin Boyle, [Mathew] Leckie. We have a lot of injuries at the moment.
"The whole point of this game is that, if we lose our whole front line like we did at the Asian Cup, we will have the depth and the quality to replace that in the World Cup qualifiers.
Arnold also said that Arzani would definitely be ready for Australia’s Olympics qualifiers next January.
“As for the Olympic qualifiers… Scotland have a winter break in January, so I do expect [Arzani] to be there.”
