The FIFA World Cup is the best sporting tournament anywhere on earth

AD, I’ve been a Roar follower for seven years, and that’s the best response to that lunatic I’ve read. That boy has issues. There’s nothing that can be done.

Grobbelaar/MQ it's good read you finally understand what we've being trying to tell you for many years. Your alter ego Grobbelaar would cite figures of Aussies playing in the bigger leagues of Europe 20 years ago to try to sell the narrative that the current batch of players are low quality. Many of us tried to explain that there was less competition for places in the big Euro leagues 20 years ago, but you would not accept this. I'm glad your new persona, MQ understands. A small win for us that one of your Roar Personalities understands.

To offer another example of what LDU is saying. If we go back 10 years ago, there would have been over 2,000+ 16-17 year olds on youth contracts across the top four leagues in the English FA. Ten years on, aged in their prime at 26-27 years of age, how many are playing with clubs in the Premiership or Championship? I doubt it would be 10% of those who started out 10 years earlier - and we are talking about footballers who actually entered the English league system. If you're an 18 year old in Australia, you actually have to be as good as, if not better, than those 10% in England who make it because they already start off with the advantage of being categorised as home grown players and actually being in the system. And that's before we consider all the other footballers from around the world wanting to play in the Premiership.

"Gentlemen...." What about the women amongst us?

Good post. Ultimately, it's a numbers game, and with 100 million footballers playing the game around the world (at least), as you move from the 10th tier of the game to the very top, a substantial percentage cannot progress, but even then, you end up with a couple of hundred thousand capable of playing a decent standard of professional football vying for maybe 20,000 contracts in the best leagues around the world, i.e. even when you make it near the top of the football pyramid, you're still a one in ten chance, because of the sheer numbers involved.

...and yet "authors" like Sean feel the need to comment on something they don't really like. It's usually AFL fans and I've met a few while here in Kazan. Thank goodness they haven't been wearing those cringe worthy sleveless shirts.

It's when you come to a World Cup do you really realise what you're up against as players/team. Since the author couldn't help himself and had to embarrassingly bring up AFL in his article, you get confirmation of how inconsequential the sport is when you come to a tournament like this.

In my experience, people who resent or don't like the game run through a stock collection of reasons - diving, flares, crowd violence (they don't know or care that it doesn't happen any more) draws, low scoring, unmanly. When one of them becomes passe, they move on to the next one ad nauseam. And yes they don't care when the same things happen in their preferred sports.

But PH the A-League is ordinary while AFL has world class players that the author loves to watch. It's that magical thing that happens only in the southern states of Australia. It's really quite a phenomenon that has scientists baffled as to how Australians that play A-league are ordinary yet Australians that play AFL and cricket players are world class.

The aussie "sports" fans still going on about the Italy game and the pen. If you have no idea its usually best not to say anything.

Your numbers of those "making it" are very, very optimistic. Football is a ridiculously herd sport to make it to the very top in. I'm pretty rubbish at it but I went to a school that was one of the very best in England at football, regularly making the final of the FA Schools Cup at U16 level (we didn't have a Sixth Form). Even our second team would beat virtually every other school in the country. Do you know how many pros came out of our school? One. And his career consisted of one game for Nottingham Forest in the Premier League, broke his leg, took the insurance payout and never played again. The most skilful player I knew was my best mate's younger cousin. Played for England U14 to U18 and was signed by Arsenal. Never got a game even for their reserves and was loaned to Leyton Orient. Couldn't get into their first team and was loaned to Borehamwood Town. Never made it as a pro. My dad was a PE teacher for over 40 years and of all the massively talented kids he taught only 2 became pro footballers. Now admittedly both became legends for England and their clubs - I'm pretty sure one is still the Premier League's top scorer - but it goes to show how rare it is to make it.

I wouldn't say consuming all, but the standard of our game is definitely improving, Maybe our coaching standards are below the bigger countries in Europe but surely it is only a matter of time before we have three or four world class players in our national team. I would put Trent Sainsbury's defence in that class already, from what I've seen at this world cup.

great pointon talent not being the only indicator, otherwise how do you explain someone following Grimsby Town in England, when they could be watching Tottenham instead.

Casper why do you care? Not like you said anything to refute what Nem just posted, once again a pointless post from you

Gentlemen I believe that last year there were approximately 1.2 million amateur footballers in this country. That's more than some European countries have. The vast majority of those are aged 16 and under. Now cast your mind forward to the 2026 world cup and beyond. Lets say that half a million of our amateurs are lads. Lets say 1 percent of those lads make it to National Premier League. That's 5000 talented players and of that group 1 percent make it to the A-League or overseas. That's a minimum of 50 international standard players. That's two world cup squads. Then there are those that play but dont make the talent squads plus the player's peripheral network of friends family and players who support the game. Sit back relax and watch our game consume all in it's path.

I appreciate the sentiments, Sean, and I understand that football isn't to everybody's tastes - for whatever reason - but why did you find it necessary to mar the article with this highly dubious sentence: "Football is a particularly popular junior sport, yet is lacking in talent when it comes to the senior A-League in comparison to the majority of other world leagues such as La Liga and the Premier League." Have you watched the majority of other world leagues? If so, you must be more of a football fan than you let on. I've been watching football avidly for 60 years and I have seen nowhere near even a tenth of 1% of games from world leagues. I can agree that the talent isn't of the quality of some teams in a few leagues, but I doubt whether it is worse than the majority of football played around the world. Besides, talent isn't necessarily an indicator of how the game is enjoyed, which you obviously agree with, otherwise you wouldn't have the feelings you express in the article. There are many ways to enjoy football, admiring talent is only one. Emotional engagement is a far superior way to enjoy a football match (and even a football league), and your article tacitly agrees with that, and that is true for whether it is the World Cup or the local over 35s team. Still, glad you get something from the World Cup, and I agree it is the best sporting event on the planet.

... yikes.

As a football fan, the most annoying thing about the World Cup is reading the thought of football illiterates every day whining everything that's wrong about the World Cup, about FIFA and about football. If you don't enjoy it P!$$ OFF. Football doesn't need you. Football doesn't want you. Football doesn't give a stuff about you, or what you like, or what you don't like. Football is the biggest sport on the planet. It's the biggest team sport in Australia for people aged 14 and older. It's the biggest team sport in Australia for people aged under 14. The reason the ALeague "is lacking in talent in comparison to the majority of other world leagues such as La Liga and the Premier League" is due to the basic laws of economics. The best labour will be drawn to the highest wages. And, for football the highest wages are overseas. Just like the highest wages for every global industry are overseas. The only wages that are highest in Australia will be the wages for jobs that have no market outside Australa.

I enjoyed the article Sean, until you started telling us, repeatedly, that you don't like soccer, and your mates don't like soccer and don't even understand it. But aah, we love our sports. I grew up playing rugby union and league in a fanatical rugby & league home, and barely knew soccer let alone follow it. I watched the 2006 World Cup, like you and your mates, supporting Australia and decided then that we just had to do better at this global sport. All I could offer was support so I joined an A League club and adopted an EPL team as my other club, and I watched and read everything I could to learn about the game. It's offered me so much more than the rugby and league teams which I still follow btw, but now I've got Champions League (in Asia & Europe) and the Asia Cup plus the World Cup, and I've got a number of teams around the world where ex-A League players now play. I've watched my team play in Malaysia and plan a holiday around a match in Germany, or maybe I'll be in France to watch our Matildas in their World Cup next year. I still follow other codes, but if you really want us to do well in a global sport, support our domestic soccer game.

It's a valuable community service announcement, worth repeating.