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Australia’s football fraternity says the game will survive and thrive despite FIFA providing the nation a humiliating lesson in where it stands in world football politics.
Australia performed dismally in the 2022 World Cup ballot after nearly three years of lobbying, schmoozing and kowtowing to the powerbrokers at the top of the sport.
After spending $45 million on the bid, it picked up just one vote and was the first nation eliminated from the five-horse race to host the tournament – eventually won by Asian Football Confederation rival Qatar.
But predictions Australian football would be irreparably damaged domestically by the World Cup bid failure have been shot down by players and pundits alike.
Former Socceroos goalkeeper Mark Bosnich said he had no doubt Australia could and would eventually host a World Cup.
And he said the game had made such big strides in development and playing standard there would be no return to the bad old days when the sport had no money and looked to have no future.
“One day it will come here,” Bosnich said of the World Cup.
“Every game, every sport, every business has its peaks and its troughs.
“It’s the way you come back from the troughs and the way you maintain the peaks that separates you from the rest.”
Current and past Socceroos admitted to being shattered by the bid failure.
Skipper Lucas Neill’s mobile phone gathered a phalanx of text messages from devastated teammates as he sat with a dejected bid team in Zurich afterwards.
Everton star Tim Cahill, also part of the delegation in Zurich, said the defeat would not derail football’s growth in Australia.
“We have so many great players in the Australian team who play all over Europe and put in so much time and effort – we will make sure it doesn’t happen,” Cahill said.
Former Socceroo John Aloisi, whose famous spot-kick in the playoff against Uruguay ensured Australia a spot in the 2006 World Cup finals, admitted he was stunned by Qatar’s success in the bidding process.
“Bitterly disappointed is an understatement,” said Melbourne Heart’s Aloisi, who had been actively involved as a bid ambassador for Australia.
“We’ve got the country, we’ve got the infrastructure, we’ve got the people, we’ve hosted a great Olympics.
“I thought everything was positive for us and we had a massive chance of getting it.
“Now we have to look at winning a World Cup before we host one, because we won’t be hosting one for a while.”
A-League boss Lyall Gorman said he was confident Australian football would not lose momentum, and believed publicity generated by the unsuccessful bid could even attract new fans to the sport.
And Neill said he hoped the Socceroos could not only road-test Qatar’s ability to host a top tournament in the Asian Cup in January, but prove a point by winning it.
“It is up to us to see what sort of tournament they can host in January and hopefully we can spoil their hospitality by taking away the Asian Cup,” Neill said.
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