The Socceroos woke the public to soccer, but it won’t transform the sport immediately | Australia

AUstralia woke up to two pieces of news on Sunday morning. For one thing, the Socceroos played Lionel Messi’s Argentines (!) in the round of 16 of the World Cup (!). The other, dropped at the exact same time, was the fixture for the first round of the 2023 AFL season. This isn’t a rift in Australian Rules Football, the sport. Rather, a curious look at the AFL, the organization. Caroline Wilson, one of the country’s most respected AFL journalists, slammed the alleged attempt to usurp football’s greatest moment as “lame” and said it should have given the Socceroos some clear air.

Australia’s code wars need no explanation. They’ve been bubbling away for decades, punctuated by the occasional overcooking that throws #SokkahTwitter into the siege mentality it’s always partisan to. On Sunday, however, it felt a little different. Almost like the AFL is…nervous? Even challenged? Didn’t the November draft get the same breakthrough because the eyes were elsewhere?

The problem, if there is one, is fabricated from within. Because while Australians can’t get enough of almost every sport on offer, football has perhaps been the one with the least pull of late. The mere fact that the 2006 era is still the last point of reference between then and now for many is a case in point. Football is no threat despite the waves of wonder the Socceroos have sent through society over the past 10 days.

For 16 years administrators, players, coaches and supporters have tried to promote the sport but have been prevented from doing so by various forces. Some are home made. There was a disastrous World Cup bid, the gradual sanitation of fan culture to the point of near-death, the failure to capitalize on an Asian Cup won on home soil and the lack of proper development pathways to prevent children with the right skills from other sports be poached. These are just a few examples, but they demonstrate the puzzle the game must solve to even stand a chance of causing real consternation among other codes.

Other factors have also contributed, most notably a lack of government funding and corporate investment at all levels of the game, from grassroots to pro level. But perhaps the biggest challenge is one that could support all of the above immeasurably, but is also somehow uncontrollable: public opinion.

It takes more than marketing campaigns and good football to move something like this. It takes something significant, like an unusually deep run at a World Cup. And even that probably won’t change the status quo overnight. Football Australia and the Australian Professional Leagues, who now govern the A-Leagues, are already taking steps to capitalize on this unique moment that has swept from Melbourne to Perth and everywhere in between. It’s hard to ignore, but just as hard to use.

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The A-League Men restarts this weekend, providing an ideal springboard to market their now better-known Socceroos. Head to Melbourne City to see Mat Leckie, Adelaide United to see Craig Goodwin and Central Coast Mariners to see Garang Kuol (at least for the next few weeks) and Jason Cummings.

“I hope and expect that the Australians will start to respect the A-League and its quality,” said Socceroos coach Graham Arnold on Saturday in Doha, on the eve of the 2-1 defeat by Argentina. “I’ve been all over Europe and the A-League is as good as most European competitions.”

Goodwin, who scored Australia’s first goal in Qatar against France, was confident public sentiment could gradually translate into meaningful change. “We hope we’ve inspired the young generation to push themselves,” he said. “We hope what we have achieved here can help the game grow at home because the A-League is better than you think and the quality of Australian football is better than you think.

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“I think it’s been like that for a long time but hopefully what we’ve been able to achieve here can put Australian football on the map and help the game grow.”

It can, but attention spans are notoriously short. Less than 24 hours after Australia drove Argentina to their deaths, Kylian Mbappé once again outdid himself and England marched on mercilessly. Australia, while garnering much praise around the world, is no longer the story of the tournament.

Goodwin used the word “hope” repeatedly after the match. It’s probably the right emotion, because some things can’t be forced or grown at will. Qatar has spent its billions building a national football team and culture, all for the return of poor results and fan involvement. Western Sydney Wanderers barely had a dollar or a squad when they formed in 2012, but had the very open-minded working class of western Sydney and Tony Popovic as managers. They topped the A-League table in their inaugural season and won the Asian Champions League in 2014.

Sometimes the pieces just fit together, through enterprise or luck or a bit of both – and some other things too. More often they take significantly more time to get to the same place. The Socceroos woke up the Australian public to football, but their achievements won’t immediately change a country’s ingrained sporting inclinations (don’t worry, AFL). What they have done is constructed hope, which is the first step.