Well, what’d ya know? Australian soccer surprises everyone again!
Australia goes down fighting and almost… almost getting something against ‘unbeatable’ Argentin – one of the 16 best teams in the world.
What if?
What if Garang Kuol’s shot on target in the 97th minute had’ve deflected off the keeper and in?
That’s how close we were against mighty ‘unbeatable’ Argentina.
We’re not perfect, two horrid defensive mistakes crystallise that fact. But we’re also nowhere as bad as anyone thinks. And we could be even better. We could be so much better.
And by ‘we’ I don’t really mean your casual viewer of the Socceroos.
I mean the million or so Australians who pay attention to Australian football in some capacity when there is not a World Cup happening.
‘We’ constitutes the A-League/NPL/Australia Cup viewership on TV or at the games live, the members who hand over their hard-earned to try and keep the ball rolling. The mums, the dads, the volunteers, the canteen operators.
That’s the reason, that’s how ‘we’ win a World Cup, ‘we’ require you to stop taking this for granted and to join ‘us’ in bringing the money to Australian soccer.
Yes, it requires money, your money, sponsorship money, any old money, Australian soccer will need it to be able to go on and win a World Cup.
The first thing we need to do is to find a way to subsidise youth football so the likes of the Kuol brothers are not ‘tin rattling’ their way into green and gold uniforms.
Casual viewers of the Socceroos at World Cups, we need you for that, we need your participation in some way, the Socceroos need you to participate in Australian soccer in some way, whether it’s club membership, volunteering or just putting the A-League on the telly when it’s on.
Yes, we can.
If you can support Australian football in some way together we may lift Australia all the way to the FIFA World Cup trophy.
If the round of 16 and going out by the nearest of margins is what the million or so Australian football people can achieve imagine what we could do if we were 5, 10 or 20 million strong?
I’ve written one of these for the last four World Cups but I can honestly say I’ve never felt more certain of this than right now.
With very little, very very little, Australia shocked the world again.
I believe in Australia, I believe that we can win a World Cup. I can imagine it more now than ever.
Here’s to unleashing the Kuol brothers in the Asian Cup next year!