JAPAN vs AUSTRALIA

[Tyrone Biggums]

Interesting you should say this, but most football fans in England like the idea of playing in the Euros every 4 years. I'd wager the average Aussie fan couldn't give less of a toss that they aren't playing in the Oceania Nations Cup every 2 years these days.

When it's AFL season most average Aussies wouldn't have even know there was a world qualifying game on. I know I didn't til the late news told me.

 

[saafend_seagull]

Good. No place for jedinak.

 

[Simster]

I was joking about England, OBVIOUSLY. There's nothing wrong with European qualification at all. Yes it's harder than the others, but so be it. If England can't get out of their current group, for example, then they don't deserve to go, regardless of what other 'lesser' nations make it.

I stand by my original point re Australia though, but you have offered a solution - merging the two federations. Aus simply deciding to move IS ridiculous. Them being 'sports mad' and the other countries all being shit, doesn't come into it. They are where they are.

Europe's problem is that it now has something like 53 members. Oceania has 11 (plus 4 associates), CONMEBOL (South America) only has 10!

So when it comes to qualifying, FIFA are playing out a balancing act between on the one hand making it a global tournament and on the other hand showcasing the world's best teams. I think they do a good job of it though.

If qualifying was handled purely on merit Clearly, Europe would contribute a lot more than 13 of the 32 World Cup spots. So, from a world perspective, it is quite understandable that some European sides missing out on qualification can feel aggrieved when you see 4 (+ playoff) from South America, or 2 or 3 utterly pony Asian teams qualifying.

I don't agree that Australia moving to Asia is ridiculous. You seem to be expecting them to wait for Oceania to merge with Asia, or just lump it. But they had good reason NOT to lump it, because they wanted competitive football. Equally, Asia wanted a respected footballing powerhouse to complement their portfolio of competitive nations like Japan, China, South Korea and Saudi.

And this is hardly a new thing anyway - UEFA has several Asian members who all have their own reasons for wanting to be administered by UEFA - Israel, Kazakhstan, Turkey (most of which is in Asia), Russia (same) and so on.

 

[Simster]

When it's AFL season most average Aussies wouldn't have even know there was a world qualifying game on. I know I didn't til the late news told me.

Although that is clearly a Victoria-centric view of things (they are Aussie rules mad in your neck of the woods eh), the main issue for the socceroos and A-League is the absence of a free to air TV contract

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

I understand Australia's reason for changing federations, but not why FIFA allowed it. It's utterly preposterous. "We're finding qualification a bit of a chore. We'd like to be in Asia from now on"

We're only 200 km away from the most southern part of Indonesia. Compare that to 1400 km to the most western part of New Zealand.

We could be in Indonesia territory before you landed in Germany for example.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Although that is clearly a Victoria-centric view of things (they are Aussie rules mad in your neck of the woods eh), the main issue for the socceroos and A-League is the absence of a free to air TV contract

Hardly Vic-centric. The games huge in South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory. There's a fair sized area of Queensland and the ACT that are AFL. NSW is growing but it's still quite small in its size of interest.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Although that is clearly a Victoria-centric view of things (they are Aussie rules mad in your neck of the woods eh), the main issue for the socceroos and A-League is the absence of a free to air TV contract

I believe SBS is going to be showing an A-League match once week from next season. In the end though it comes down to there being too much competition for young male athletes from other sports. Soccer will always drag behind AFL because the AFL's ran so well as a business.

 

[Ex-Staffs Gull]

To be honest, its not just victoria, south Australia is the same. AFL is king and football comes in down the list behind cricket, v8 and cycling.

Football will never gain traction locally until there are local derbies, I.e at least 2 teams in each city. More people turn up for local AFL (SANFL) than A-League games.

 

[rcf0712]

How is it any more preposterous than a sports mad country of 20m people being expected to play it's only main competitive matches against a handful of Pacific Islands and New Zealand? Have a look at the membership list - it is ridiculous:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania_Football_Confederation

I think that's the real problem here. And for WC qualifying, even when they beat those other nations (with ease), they still ended up having to play-off against some also rans who had screwed up their own route to qualifying. As I say, if there is a place for the Oceania federation, then IMO it should be a sub-federation to the Asian federation.


Interesting you should say this, but most football fans in England like the idea of playing in the Euros every 4 years. I'd wager the average Aussie fan couldn't give less of a toss that they aren't playing in the Oceania Nations Cup every 2 years these days.

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as an Oceania Cup - As for the Asian Cup, it still remains elusive to Australia after several attempts

 

[rcf0712]

When it's AFL season most average Aussies wouldn't have even know there was a world qualifying game on. I know I didn't til the late news told me.

Most average Aussies, don't tempt me. Seriously though, it was advertised extensively on both Soccer Bloody Soccer and Foxtel in the run up to it, as has the home game against Jordan tomorrow night. Come on Tyrone.

 

[rcf0712]

Another reason for exiting Oceania and jumping on the Asian Federation was it was supposed to grease the wheels of securing the World Cup - then the whole Qatar backhander / searing heat fiasco took over and that was the end of that......

 

[Simster]

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as an Oceania Cup - As for the Asian Cup, it still remains elusive to Australia after several attempts

There is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFC_Nations_Cup

Most average Aussies, don't tempt me. Seriously though, it was advertised extensively on both Soccer Bloody Soccer and Foxtel in the run up to it, as has the home game against Jordan tomorrow night. Come on Tyrone.

Tyrone has a history of belittling sports that Australia is a bit average at.

 

[rcf0712]

There is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFC_Nations_Cup

Tyrone has a history of belittling sports that Australia is a bit average at.

There you go, who knew, never heard of it - I may be resting some cases for people here....

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Most average Aussies, don't tempt me. Seriously though, it was advertised extensively on both Soccer Bloody Soccer and Foxtel in the run up to it, as has the home game against Jordan tomorrow night. Come on Tyrone.

So it's on two stations, one that's hardly watched by the greater population and the other which is a paid station that once again the greater % of population don't subscribe too.

So my point stands.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

There is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFC_Nations_Cup


Tyrone has a history of belittling sports that Australia is a bit average at.

How am I belittling Soccer here?

Simply pointing out it's a minnow compared to AFL here. Which it is and always will be.

 

[topbanana36]

The jordanians had a strong warm-up match last night

 

[churley1]

South America have always had it the easiest. I think there are 10 nations in the S American federation, 4 qualify automatically and one goes into a play-off!

CONCACAF is also a picnic compared to Europe. I think there are 3 spots up for grabs there which means a Carribean Island will qualify and Mexico & USA have to bollox it up spectacularly in order to fail.

There are just too many nations in Europe, so that is where the World Cup trade off between best teams and global event is most keenly felt. Africa is quite harsh too.

The only sides who would consider it 'easy' to qualify for the WC in South America would be Brazil and Argentina and even the latter scraped through late on for WC2010.

For the rest, it's incredibly difficult and by far the most entertaining on the world stage. Nobody has an advantage unlike in Europe where the likes of England should always qualify due to the constantly weak groups.

I hope Australia qualify to be fair, they'll have a fair amount of fans in Brazil I'd imagine and Jedinak would be a stalwart in their midfield!

 

[Buffalo Seagull]

Have to agree with Tyrone on this one. I didn't know the game was on until about an hour before kick off. The result got a fair bit of coverage on the main free to air stations the next morning, but there was hardly any build up to it.

 

[Nottseagull]

Surely it is only a matter of time before Oceania is absorbed fully by the Asian federation. It really is a feeble, very weak set up. By far the world's weakest.

My own idea is that Oceania is massively expanded to include all nations that have territory jutting into the western Pacific. So, this would include China, but not Mongolia; South Korea, but not NK; Japan, but not Russia; and all SE Asian nations, but not Sri Lanka. All those former 'stan' countries that used to in the USSR should be shunted into Asia to make good the shortfall and reduce the ridiculously long journeys that some European nations have to endure.