Australia suffers double World Cup blow

Australia pulled its bid to host the tournament – then they got walloped 4-0 by Germany “Complete, utter disaster,” said the Sydney Morning Herald.

It was a night that had promised much more. Australian expats and those making the long haul to South Africa were ready to party. Such was the force of their raucous rendition of Advance Australia Fair, the national anthem, prior to kick-off in the awesome Moses Mabhida stadium that this could have been the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the Australian Rules grand final.
But they were soon silenced as the impressive Germans tore apart the Socceroos’ midfield before slicing through a paper-thin defence.

Not that some Australian fans were all that familiar with the game of football, which has to fight for attention back home with the powerhouse sports of Australian Rules, rugby league, rugby union and cricket.

 “We’re big Aussie Rules fans,” admitted Patrick O’Callaghan, a 30-year-old town planner from Melbourne who was on a World Cup backpacker tour with mates.
The battle to get football up the Australian pecking order is one Frank Lowy, Football Federation Australia’s chairman, has been fighting for some years. In an effort to get other sports to co-operate with Australia’s bid to host the World Cup, Mr Lowy, who set up the Westfield retail group, has had to negotiate compensation deals over the disruption staging the event would cause their sports.

He came to South Africa hoping to inject momentum into the bid, only to be caught out by a declaration last week from Mohammed bin Hammam, president of the Asian Football Confederation, that the AFC was throwing its considerable weight behind a European country for the hosting rights of the 2018 tournament.

The Australians had been preparing their 2018 pull-out for some months, in order to focus on a 2022 bid. Fifa will make its decision on both 2018 and 2022 in December. But there were voices in the normally pliant Australian media wondering whether the country’s world cup bidding strategy was intact.

Mr Lowy maintained that the Australian bid for the 2022 tournament was still on track. “Where else would be better for football in 2022?” he said. “We are sitting in the biggest growth part of the world. China and Indonesia are in our sphere.

 “For the growth of the game Australia is best placed. People complain about travelling time but we are a well-equipped, sport-loving nation and two-thirds of the world’s population are in our time zone.”

Australia face an uphill task getting through to the next round in South Africa, with Ghana and Serbia in their path. The obstacles to proving to the world and to naysayers at home that the World Cup should come to Australia are looking even bigger.

Source FT.com