The greatest goalscorer in A-League history suffered in silence when he received the heartbreaking news – and instead flew to Melbourne to be with Iva.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
‘The timing was poor,’ said Iva. ‘Those sort of things you can’t plan for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘It either makes you stronger, or weaker I guess, but everything happens for a reason and we’ve really learnt that over the course of the last ten years. But, yeah. Everything fell to pieces a little bit.’<\/p>\n
Iva watched on from home as the the Socceroos enjoyed an historic World Cup that saw them achieve their best ever finish at the tournament.<\/p>\n
Despite arriving in Qatar as rank outsiders in Group D, Australia reached the Round of 16 for the first time since 2006 before losing 2-1 to eventual champions Argentina.<\/p>\n
‘I wanted to go to the World Cup but, timing wasn’t right,’ she says.<\/p>\n
Maclaren’s parents, Don and Julie, made the trip to Qatar and made sure he had emotional support he needed.<\/p>\n
Don Maclaren played football in Scotland for Hearts of Midlothian’s youth team, before emigrating to Australia and having a successful career in the old NSL.<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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Iva watched on from home as the the Socceroos enjoyed an historic World Cup that saw them achieve their best ever finish at the tournament<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Iva and Jamie have revealed they are expecting again and preparing for the birth of a girl in September.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
‘Like any father, you hope your kids end up liking the sport that you like,’ he said<\/p>\n
‘I was a professional football player, my younger brother was a professional football player. Everything I did basically involved football so they obviously had the bug, it’s in our DNA.<\/p>\n
‘We’ve been lucky enough over the course of Jamie’s journey to have had the financial resources to be able to travel overseas and watch him play<\/p>\n
In Qatar last year this support was more important than ever.<\/p>\n
‘We got to see the team and Jamie fairly regularly,’ said Don.<\/p>\n
‘It was a tough time. We just dealt with it the best we could. It was hard.’<\/p>\n
Iva and Jamie have revealed they are expecting again and preparing for the birth of a girl in September.<\/p>\n
Maclaren is certain she will inherit the family’s love of football.<\/p>\n
‘There’s going to be a Matilda in the family,’ he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
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Share or comment on this article: <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n <\/ad-slot><\/p>\n <\/ad-slot><\/p><\/div>\nRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Socceroos star Jamie Maclaren opens up on the tragic family heartbreak that almost caused him to miss the World Cup: ‘Everything fell to pieces’ \u00a0Maclaren’s wife miscarried on eve of World Cup \u00a0Striker was due to fly out to Qatar that day \u00a0Maclaren delayed his trip to be by wife’s side By James Cooney For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[276,283,23,166,282,226,278,279,218,281,280,277,194,128,227,18],"acf":{"source_article":"","image_credit":""},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}