Australia has always been a highly successful sporting nation, but are we expecting too much too soon from our Socceroos? Andrew Woods investigates.

Do fans expect too much from the socceroos? Image:doggiesrule04

Although Australia bailed out in the group stages of this year’s FIFA World Cup, this isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm.

Despite the fact that this is currently the nineteenth World Cup, no team outside of South America or Central/Western Europe has ever won the coveted trophy.

“The expectation was that we were gonna breeze through the group stages and make it into the knockout stages, and that was maybe a little bit unfair I thought. It was a hell of a group, you know,” said Attila Abonyi, a member of the Australian Football Hall of Champions and the Socceroos squad that took the nation to our first World Cup in 1974.

Speaking to media outlets after the Socceroos bowed out of the world cup, Football Federation Australia chairman, Frank Lowy said, “Only 16 teams go through to the knock out rounds and it is unfortunate that we are not one of them this time but the Socceroos have further established their reputation as consistent performers at the highest international level.

“They [the Socceroos] have shown the world how much Australians love football and how much support there is for the game in our country and our region.”

However, soccer has not been an area of great success for Australia.

The 4-0 defeat by Germany left a lot of the Australian public wondering what happened in the world of Australian soccer since the last world cup where Australia played well.

Soccer fan, Kate Davis, 22, said, “I think it’s got to do with the tall poppy syndrome in a way. We did really well last time and maybe we wanted to bring the team back down when they didn’t perform this time.”

But it isn’t simply Australia’s tall poppy syndrome that caused us to expect so much.

“Is Australia a nation that is obsessed with sport? Yes. But does that then translate to them being involved in sport? No,” said Dr Peter Horton, a lecturer at James Cook University and a member of the International Editorial Board of the International Journal of the History of sport.

The Socceroos first started trying to qualify for the World Cup in 1966 but have only qualified for three to date.

This isn’t such an alarming statistic when compared to a nation like Portugal, who are considered to be a soccer nation yet have only qualified four times out of the 18 tournaments they have entered.

“You look at some of the countries like Brazil, Argentina and Germany…they’re a football nation well we’re not, let’s face it,” said Abonyi.

When asked why we expected so much of the Socceroos in the World Cup, fan Scott Stratford, 49, said, “Because we always do. Australians always expect to do well when it comes to sport.”

However this view hasn’t always been held for Australia in soccer. When Abonyi went to Germany in 1974 with the Socceroos squad, the expectation for the team was “bugger all”.

“Now the nation is a lot more involved, publicity is a lot more, everything is just entirely different,” he said.

Socceroo supporters say the high expectations for the World Cup squad was due to the team’s achievement in 2006.

“We did so well last time and we only lost by one to the team that ended up winning it,” said fan, Garry Simon, 22.

Ben Newsom, 20 said, “Also heaps of the same generation of players from the last World Cup are still in the squad. I do think that people also didn’t fully get the role of the coach in our last World Cup.”

Dr Horton said the best way to make this point is by comparing us to our own cross-Tasman rivals.

“Across the Tasman, they’ve got 25 professional players, and yet they achieved exactly the same result,” he said.

“As for Australia’s chances of eventually winning a World Cup,” Abonyi said.

“Not in our lifetime, put it that way”.