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This Friday, Brazil are playing Argentina at the MCG. Two foreign teams are coming to Australia to play each other, make a lot of money and go straight back home.
It is a match of utterly zero significance.
Yet this match, a friendly between two foreign countries from the other side of the world, has sold 95,000 tickets. Yes, it is set to be perhaps the most attended football game in Australia this year.
Meanwhile, Australia’s two national teams, the Socceroos and the Wallabies, will play in front of probably 30,000 people on the same weekend, if they’re lucky.
How embarrassing. There probably isn’t a single country in the world where this would happen. If the game was in England, it would be all eyes on the English team. Or Brazil or Argentina for that matter.
My question to every Australian sports fan is why are you so elitist that you can’t get behind your own team? Why do you have to support a team full of superstars?
The other question is why are the 95,000 so interested. The only valid reason I can think of is that there are some high quality footballers who will be playing (some will also be not playing). Fair enough, you want to see Leo Messi, but why don’t you also want to see Australia, the team and not the individual?
(Wikimedia Commons)
Last month, Liverpool came to Australia to play Sydney FC. It was a farcical game, there was no real contest and it finished 3-0 to Liverpool. Most of the 70,000 strong crowd participated in a Mexican wave at various points throughout the game. It was a snoozefest.
So why did 70,000 people go? I honestly can’t tell you the answer. The argument used to be that these tours did heaps for the local game – an argument which was debunked when it emerged the touring teams take almost all the cash.
What is worse is that almost all of the people that went to the Liverpool game where wearing red. In Sydney, against the local football team, again a feat that would be repeated nowhere else on Earth. Is it some kind of cultural cringe? Are we too elite to support our own team?
How about we all switch off the colourless money making exercise on Friday night, and switch on to the Socceroos, and switch on to the Wallabies on Saturday afternoon. Go you good thing and long live Australian sport!
Are you the ultimate team manager? Pick your own superstar team and go head to head with other football fans for glory and cash prizes on Draftstars. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.