John Aloisi knows better than most the feeling of beating Japan on the world stage.

Aloisi, who scored in Australia's famous 2006 World Cup win over Japan in Kaiserslautern, is confident Tony Popovic is the perfect person to engineer just that on Tuesday night.

The former Socceroo said frustrating the Japanese into submission is one way the Socceroos can end their 15-year wait for a win over the Samurai Blue, and their first in Japan.

Popovic prides himself on his defence, which will be determined to stifle Japan's attack at every turn.

"The longer you go (without conceding) — and I know with a Popovic team he'll make sure that they're really organised and hard to break down, and then with a little bit of quality going forward you can cause them problems — so you expect that could frustrate the Japanese," Aloisi told AAP.

"At this point in time, yes, we always want to see our national team playing a certain style of football and attacking and scoring goals, but we need results and I think Popa can get those results."

Aloisi believes a point for Australia in Saitama would be "huge" — but going one better would be seriously special.

"A win would be one of our biggest results," he said.

"Forget about over there, it's '09 here. That's 15 years. So that's a long period of time since we've won a game against Japan.

"So a win there would be one of our biggest results, especially in qualification.

"In World Cups we've had a few big results but in qualification that would be our biggest result."

Popovic won his first match in charge of Australia last week, with a 3-1 win over China at the Adelaide Oval.

AAP