Sunday, August 27, 2006

Whatever happened to soccer?

When I grew up soccer was a very popular winter sport played all around Australia. It was and remains one of the most popular participant sport in the country. On the international stage though Australia sucked. Now that the dust has settled after the world cup, Australia still sucks and always will.

Why am I so down on my own national team? Because this is a sport where we will never be contenders. There are several reasons for this:
1) Most Australians will not pay to watch local soccer (That is why our top league is played in summer, in Australia.)
2) We are remote geographically from the centers of world soccer, this means we cannot really play many worthwhile internationals.
3) We are simply too small to generate players of the skills needed. We can do it every 10-20 years, but we never get near the top ten.
4) All our very best players play in other nations because that's where the money is.

So lets just accept the obvious and stop pushing this sport like it's the next big thing, it ain't getting any bigger in Australia. While we are at can common sense prevail in Australia it's soccer not football. No code calls itself football because it is just too damn confusing (football can be soccer, Australian Rules, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Gridiron) get used to the fact that we have many types of football you need to drop the arrogance and call your code by a name that identifies it.

P.S soccer is a winter sport, it should not be played in 35 degree temperatures in the middle of summer.

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