The value of foreign-developed players: What Football Australia can learn from Morocco for Socceroos success
Morocco is not the only nation to find success with a large contingent of foreign-developed players - and the Socceroos can join that list.
As stated many times on The Roar, football (i.e. soccer) has moved on in Australia in leaps and bounds over the past seven to eight years, which is great. It seems a similar thing is happening in New Zealand at the moment.
One of the negatives though of ‘taking the game to the masses’ is the labels that other teams are getting. For example, over the past few days since New Zealand played Italy, there seems to be a stereotyping in the Australasian media (counting NZ here as well) that Italy are “divers” or “cheats”.
To be frank, most casual/occasional soccer supporters in this part of the world have only seen Italy play twice, once against Australia (in 2006) and now versus New Zealand.
I note also at this point that a German player was booked for diving versus Australia a week or so ago.
My main concern is that, as the game opens up to the masses, that stereotyping of other teams (or nationalities) is defacto racism. By that I mean, by labeling the Italian team as “cheats” or labeling the Germans as “boring” (which they weren’t), it’s stereotyping and a form of racism.
Whilst I am proud of the gains and process made by the game in Australia of late, I fear that an ‘ugly’ element is being exposed by this stereotyping during the World Cup.
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Morocco is not the only nation to find success with a large contingent of foreign-developed players - and the Socceroos can join that list.
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