Why I'm optimistic about football in Australia

While I’m never going to forget the crushing disappointment I felt when Sepp Blatter read out Qatar as hosts for 2022, just as I’ll never forget the similar feeling in 1997 as full-time was blown in that World Cup qualifier at the MCG, we need to remember that football is a strong and resilient sport.

It has had to be to even still exist in 2011, given the almost criminal neglect of the game in the 70’s through the 90’s by Soccer Australia.

What I feel we need right now, just like the FFA does, is to focus on what we can affect.

This means the Socceroos, the A-League, our local clubs and our immediate circle of influence.

So with that in mind, here are the top six reasons why I’m optimistic about football in Australia:

1. The future of the Socceroos.

I was there.

I saw Die Mannschaft run rings around the creaky old Socceroo defenders in Durban. I stood outside the Moses Mabhida Stadium waiting for my mates to exit so we could get to our coach for the hellish bus ride back to Jo’burg as the German fans danced in the street singing, ”Not vun, not two, not three, but four!”

Pim Verbeek’s reign had many fans questioning the future of the national team; our golden generation had qualified for two Cups in a row, but had not progressed past the second round in Germany, and despite gaining the same points total in Africa, leaving the 2010 tourney after the group stages.

But now what?

Where are the youngsters to replace our creaky defence going to come from? The general consensus in South Africa was that qualifying for Brazil 2014 wasn’t going to be enough; we needed to take our country on a ride deep into the elimination rounds much like the USA did in Japan/Korea 2002 to really capture the general public’s attention once again.

Well, in the last year, the young Socceroos (under-20s) coached by Jan Versleijen finished runners up in the AFC under-19 tournament in China only falling in the final to our friends from North Korea 3-2 to go onto qualify for the 2011 under-20 World Cup in Columbia(July/August).

The same u/19s won (yes, we did win some silverware in Asia!) the AFF u/19 Youth Championship(Australia, Sth Korea, Vietnam and Thailand competed) Mustafa Amini isn’t just a cult figure under an absurdly cool ranga afro, going on match reports from China he was obviously one of Australia’s best on field in the recent AFC tournament.

Our very own Kerem Bulut finished as the Golden Boot of the u/19 Asian Championship with 7 goals.

And guess where he plays? Czechoslovakia….he used to play with Sydney FC having learned his trade at the NSWIS before moving on. What does this mean?

Besides a ringing indictment on Sydney FC who have let go in recent years: Chris Payne(NQF) and Kerem Bulut(CZE), to me it means the conveyer belt of football talent wasn’t killed by the disbanding of the NSL and the creation of the A-League.

The successful u/19’s team also contained players such as Adelaide United’s Matthew Leckie, the Central Coast’s Mustafa Amini, Melbourne Heart’s Eli Babalj and Kerem Bulut formerly of Sydney FC. If anything, it has accelerated it, which brings me to point #2

2. The Joeys (u/17s)
again coached by Jan Versleijen, made it to the Semi-Finals of the 2010 u/16 AFC Cup(eventualy knocked out by Hosts Uzbekistan) to qualify for the 2011 u/17 World Cup in Mexico (June/July).

Two things here. Firstly, as mentioned above, the conveyor belt of young talent coming through ‘the system’ set up by National Technical Director Han Berger appears to be showing fruit.

With Jan Versleijen bringing a continuity to the youth set-up with regards to style of play, a more finished product should be fed up to the Young Socceroos and ultimately the full National team.

Secondly, it appears that players are seriously considering the A-League as not only a first level finishing school, but by Jan Versleijen picking players from the HAL he shows that the local league is a valid path-way to greater footballing honours, first your local state league team, then your A-League youth team, onto the national youth set-up and of course then senior A-League caps before hopefully getting selected by the National team gaffer for a senior Socceroos call-up.

I believe that save for a horrendous Surat Sukha tackle in October, young Matt Leckie would have been selected by Holger Osiek for the 2011 Asian Cup squad, before jetting off to further his career/football education in the Bundesliga.

I believe that our best young players will always want to test their mettle in the cauldron of European football, but the better the A-League gets, the longer we’ll be able to hold on to them and watch their prodigious talents live and in the flesh. Matt McKay’s break through tourney in Qatar just shows that you don’t have to leave Australia to make a big splash in the Green and Gold.

This brings me to point number three.

3. The Hyundai A-League.
10 years ago, division 1 football in Australia was a complete mess. The NSL was living on borrowed time. Producing the odd exceptional player who would immediately bog off to Europe at the first opportunity.

The level of media coverage was non existent.

In the days before the internet became as ubiquitous as it is these days, finding even basic things like results was nigh on impossible. Can anyone honesty imagine FoxSports (if it existed in 2001) investing upwards of $120m to broadcast games in mostly empty suburban stadia featuring teams named Sydney Croatia and Brunswick Juventus?

Using crowd figure as a measure of popularity, the NSL averaged crowds of 2 to 3 thousand per game in its final 5 years [source http://www.ozsoccer.net] and this is with the huge crowds Perth glory brought to the competition.

Fast forward to 2010, we’re complaining that the A-League is ‘only averaging crowds of 8,300′ in its sixth season. Let me tell you that for the fifth year in a row, well over 1 million fans will attend an A-League regular season fixture this season:

[06/07: 1,085,829;
07/08: 1,227,853;
08/09: 1,023,147;
09/10: 1,329,779;
10/11: 1,384,857]

The potential that the A-League has for growth is the single most important difference between new football and old Soccer. If the standard continues to improve and more casual fans can be converted to die hard fans, then there is no reason the A-League can’t go on to become one of the premier footballing Leagues in Asia.

Certainly it’s not all roses on the A-League front, like a couple of ‘new’ leagues that spring to mind [the J.League and the USA/Canada’s MLS] after an initial boom driven by the ‘newness factor’ things settle back down to a certain level.

This is the consolidation phase.

What we have now that we’ve never had before is huge growth potential.

General consensus on the terraces is that FFA emboldened by the success of the A-League in seasons 1 and 2, took their eye off the ball in fact many have been critical of the A$46million spend on the World Cup bid whilst seemingly ignoring the A-League, but as Dan Silkstone makes clear in his Sydney Morning Herald article:

Now where were we? [Dated 04December 2010]
“Some fans and commentators have complained that the A-League has stagnated or even gone backwards while the FFA has pumped $45.6 million into the World Cup bid.

The truth is that money was specially designated by the federal government, and would never have been available for underpinning the domestic competition”

Other quotes from that same article indicate the head man himself, FFA CEO Ben Buckley, might even be starting to ‘get it’ regarding the perceptions held that the strength of the sport in Australia is very much linked to the health of the A-League for many sports commentators, especially those who take every opportunity to further the silly code wars by sticking the boot into football at every opportunity, such as Ms Rebecca Wilson and Mr Graham Cornes.

“A period of upheaval but also opportunity now exists for football in Australia in the short term.”

We have some decisions to make in the next few weeks[dec2010] about the structural elements of the A-League,” Buckley said. “We will go from strength to strength. This [failed World Cup bid] has been a positive in that it has elevated football into people’s consciousness. I think the A-League will be stronger for it,” Buckley said.

Buckley said he would now be able to devote more time and resources to fixing the domestic game’s problems.

“It means that the whole organisation doesn’t have this other massive project going on in parallel.

“That will certainly sharpen the focus and sharpen the minds, and allow us to concentrate our energy and resources into growing the A-League,” he said.

4. The Matilda’s.
So often we as fans focus exclusively on the Male aspect of the game. But as we are constantly taunted with by fans of Australia’s other football codes, “Soccer is a girl’s game”. And you know what? It is!

The Matilda’s were the first senior Australian football team to win a continental championship since the move into Asia in 2006 and they continue to provide positive and amazing guidance as role models to young women and girls with regards to football.

Once again this is a point of difference that we as football fans should celebrate.

I think we have a women’s Rugby team (the Wallaroos) but if I’m ever lucky enough to have children and I’m blessed with girls, the Matilda’s are exactly the type of influence I hope they pay attention to when they get angry at Dad and cease to talk to me.

Fit and healthy young women, showing that it is more than just acceptable for women to raise a sweat playing a sport (In my experience, lots of girls give up playing sport in high school because it’s not considered cool to be all sweaty and running around like the boys do), generally playing for passion rather than the riches that the men are able to collect.

The Westfield W-League is FFA’s answer to its responsibility to provide the ladies with a viable ‘intermediate step’ between the local state competition and the international stage.

I’m proud that the sport I love can be played and enjoyed at international level by 100% of the human race, not just those with their plumbing on the outside.

Women’s football isn’t as fast or as physical as men’s football, but this just places the onus on the players to play with more skill and I was captivated by the Matilda’s as they played their way to the AFC Women’s Championship in 2010.

5. The Fans.
The thing that makes me most optimistic about the future of football in Australia are the fans. We are passionate, devoted and acutely tuned to the technology of the modern world.

We purchased the fourth most tickets to travel to South Africa to attend the 2010 World Cup. Surveys have shown that in general we are well educated and have a reasonable degree of disposable income. In short, we are an advertiser’s wet-dream.

Once the middle-aged pony tail wearing advertising guru’s who say ‘ciao’ into their iPhones realise this, we will help FFA and the A-League clubs partake in a much richer sponsorship pie.

Our sport is the only sport that engages the world on a regular basis.

The whole world; not just the vestiges of the former British Empire. If you want to promote your business to a desirable local demographic as well as the growing Asian market, your product needs to be on the shirt of a local football team or on the hoardings around that team’s home ground.

Besides the money aspect of the fans, our passion is what will drive the game forward. It is up to us to break out of the negativity cycle and to put our best foot forward.

Our passion and the atmosphere this creates in A-League stadiums or at Socceroos home games is what will help to draw in the great unwashed and more importantly, keep them coming back.

It is a fantastic point of difference to other sports. Football is a bug, once you are exposed to it (sometimes it only takes one moment of brilliance in a game) as well as the atmosphere created by the fanatical fans, it is hard not to catch it. We can do our part to elevate the A-League to pandemic levels in the Australian Sporting psyche.

It’s no good harnessing the negative emotions we feel from being dudded by FIFA yet again. It is difficult to control those emotions, but WE CAN and should dictate to ourselves how we will re-act to those emotions.

Joining a “f**k FIFA, f**k Sepp Blatter”, a “boycott Qatar in 2022” or “you can stick your FIFA up your Qatar” Facebook group might give you a 3 second buzz that you are ‘keeping the faith’ , but ask yourself, are you really being proactive in building our sport?
I urge you all to get out there and get into the ears of your friends to promote the game. Fight the negative false stereotypes with knowledge and facts.

Only with facts can falsehoods be disproved. And thus beliefs challenged.

To help you maintain a positive mindset, I’ve grabbed this Lucas Neill quote from Dan Silkstone’s article referenced above:

“Socceroo Lucas Neill vowed to take the game forward, despite a disappointment he said ranked alongside the 2006 World Cup loss to Italy. “Seven years ago we were dreaming about going to a World Cup, being part of a World Cup, now we are disappointed that we are not hosting it,” he said. “That’s a long way to come in seven years.”

I say go forth my friends and football colleagues, be positive and lets build our game up from the local level upwards!

Finaly, the last of six reasons to be optimistic about the future:

6. The 2015 Asian Cup.
The 2015 edition of the second biggest tournament Australia can qualify for will be held by Australia. The proposed venues by FFA are:

Etihad Stadium,
AAMI Park,
Suncorp Stadium,
Skilled Park,
ANZ Stadium,
Sydney Football Stadium,
Parramatta Stadium and
Canberra Stadium.
[AFC Cup Tournament regulations require a minimum of four and a maximum of five stadia]

To be played in January 2015, it is nowhere near as prestigious as the World Cup, but it will be great to see a large international football tournament being hosted in Australia.

It could provide an insight into the ‘power of international football’ to create dialogue with our Asian neighbours and trading partners. Our biggest footballing rivals in Japan and South Korea have already qualified and head groups as seeds.

By virtue of the finishing order of the 2011 tourney, the three countries that have already qualified for 2015 are:

Australia (as hosts and runners up in 2011)
Japan (winners 2011)
Sth. Korea (third 2011)