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Wandering about Australia's greatest football moment? It wasn't 2005

19th November, 2015
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The Western Sydney Wanderers' Tomi Juric (left) competes for the ball with Feng Xiaoting of Guangzhou Evergrande. How will the A-League do battle with the Chinese Super League? (AAP Image/Paul Miller).
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19th November, 2015
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In Kaiserslautern June 2006, my affections were torn: I had been visiting and watching Japan for years but then the Socceroos had two Blackburn Rovers players.

I was tipped towards the Samurai Blue after it seemed as all the bars on the way to the stadium were blasting out Men at Work’s biggest hit. Once is fine, twice is nice but it soon got older than Holger Osieck’s ideal footballer.

It was my first game of the 2006 World Cup and the one I enjoyed the most. Beautiful sunshine, great drama and a sense that the tournament ahead was going to be special. On the way out of the city back to Frankfurt, the cacophony of ‘Down Unders’ didn’t sound half bad.

If I was Australian, I don’t know which would be better: those crazy six minutes at the Fritz-Walter Stadion or that night in Sydney a few months earlier that made it possible.

As any Socceroo supporter knows after the stories in the media this week, it is now a decade since that penalty shootout victory over Uruguay in Sydney. Times flies faster than a John Aloisi spot-kick. With the A-League just weeks old and the country about to jettison Oceania for Asia, the success came at the right time.

It was not exactly mission impossible though. Was it dramatic? Yes and then some. Meaningful? Of course. Against all the odds? Not really.

While obviously the Oceanic route to the World Cup was hit-and-miss and perhaps unfair, it was – at least to those watching from outside and untouched by past Socceroo failures at similar stages – hardly a massive surprise that Australia qualified.

A team full of big European league experience led by one of the most successful, in-demand and experienced names in the world of coaching, drawing twice with a mid-ranking South American team and then winning a penalty shootout was a big deal. In terms of sporting achievement, however, it pales alongside that of Western Sydney Wanderers winning the 2014 Asian Champions League.

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On Saturday Al Ahli and Guangzhou Evergrande meet in the second leg of the 2015 final and early Sunday Australia time, as the Red and Black Bloc sleep, the continental crown will be lifted from their collective heads and sent north.

Perhaps when it is gone, how it was won will be more appreciated. It was an amazing achievement. It may not have galvanised the entire nation like 2005 but it was something that will surely never be repeated.

For a club in its second season in existence to win the biggest club competition was staggering. Sure, the Wanderers were lucky, Al Hilal should have had penalties in the second leg and there were other times when the football gods winked at the western suburbs, but even so, it was mighty.

It is not all about the money but finance is a factor. Guangzhou has spent lots, more than $150 million since 2010 on coaches and players. Such investment has brought five Chinese Super League titles, two World Cup winning coaches, a fair proportion of the Chinese national team and plenty of big-name foreign talent.

So far, though, the club has won the same number of Asian titles as the Wanderers.

Sections of the west Asian media have tried to portray Al Ahli as the romantic underdog, the 2015 equivalent of Western Sydney. It’s not quite true. The Dubai outfit signed Rodrigo Lima from Benfica for over $8 million earlier this year, but it is true that the Red Knights don’t have the same firepower as the Chinese champs.

They still saw off Al Hilal in the semi-final. Last year’s finalists have been desperate to add to the second Asian title it won in 2000 but just can’t do it. If fans of ‘The Boss’, who never tire of telling others of their illustrious history, found losing to the Wanderers in the final painful, the fact that the victor was just a toddler added a little extra stab.

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On the way to meet Al Hilal, the Wanderers beat some of Asia’s best and biggest. It wasn’t pretty but it was gritty.

So celebrate the ten-year anniversary but the one year that has elapsed since Western Sydney was crowned continental champion should be marked too. Perhaps by the time 2024 comes along, there will be a greater recognition of the work that these men from down under actually did.

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