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Frank Lowy is an acute businessman and passionate football man, who this week gave the Australian game a confident shot in the arm.
Lowy emerged from the World Cup debacle strong and confident in a press conference in which he guaranteed the future of the game in Australia.
He defended criticism of his and Ben Buckley’s style management of the game and served it up to three of the FFA’s biggest critics (Zeljko Kalac, Archie Fraiser and Les Scheinflug).
Lowy had to do this quicker than he thought. The opinion of the World Cup bid had for too long been dictated by non-football journalists.
People like Rebecca Wilson, Graham Cornes and Andrew Moore, who have little or no knowledge of the game, were shoveling tripe to the public. Lowy returned disappointed but confident of the future of the game, promising the public he would get football back on track.
Even with falling crowds in the A-League, Lowy has reason to be confident in the game. Despite people like Wilson claiming this country has no passion for the game, 1.8 million registered people play football every week with more probably playing casually.
To put this into perspective, the combined participation figures of the Aussie Rules and Rugby League are 100,000 more than the population of Qatar. For a country that has apparently no passion for the game, these figures will give Lowy and the FFA board confidence in the game’s future.
The challenge now is to convert the grassroots passion to Australian football. The old soccer, new football divide is still strong with old soccer suspicious of the A-League.
In Australia, too many people are still running around in Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid shirts. These supporters need to be converted into wearing Adelaide United and Sydney FC shirts to give the A-League the fan base it needs.
That is the challenge for the FFA from now on because without old soccer, new football will stagnate.
However, with all due respect, Lowy still has time to start the conversion. He is still the best man to lead Australia’s biggest sporting code in terms of the rawest of participation numbers.
He has fought the detractors before and he shall do it again.
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