The Socceroos recently played two friendlies with Greece, who were coming off a dismal Euro 2016 qualifying series.
The matches ended 1-0 in favour of Ange Postecoglou’s side in Sydney and then a 2-1 Greece victory in Melbourne. However, the much bigger picture is that Australia can reflect on over a decade as a member of the Asian Football Confederation, the crowning achievement of which (besides qualifying for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups) was winning the Asian Cup in 2015, a tournament hosted in this county with great success. Besides this, of course, is Western Sydney Wanderers winning the 2014 AFC Champions’ League, a tournament that Adelaide United had reached the final of in 2008. Only this year, Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC narrowly missed out on the quarter-finals stage of the same competition.
So where does Australia stand in Asia, and where does Asia stand in the football world? Cold analysis will show a reality that confounds the pessimists as much as it dents the optimists about Asian football – specifically that it is still one of the weaker major regions in the game’s terms and, as a consequence, Australia’s membership of the AFC has been mutually beneficial. The sweetest aspect of joining is that by default the Socceroos became one of the confederation’s leading football powers and what seems like a shoe-in for regular qualification at major tournaments. This is not blustering or arrogance, but based on facts of the matter. Australia’s value to the AFC was summed up by the 2015 triumph, in a tournament with excellent attendances and some decent displays on the pitch.
Not only Euro 2016, but also the Copa America Centenario and the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers have demonstrated that despite the bold proclamation of the future being in Asia, the gulf has yet to be bridged. The region remains unequal in terms of football quality and ability, such that there appears to be a permanent hierarchy – Australia, Japan and South Korea being the three strongest and guaranteed repeated qualification for the World Cup, followed by Middle Eastern sides such as Iran, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, then Central Asian sides such as Uzbekistan and also China. After this the level drops, with a large glut of countries possessing little in a way of football tradition or pedigree, much less development in the game. While CONCACAF appears to have similar disparities, three of its four teams made it past the group stage of the 2014 World Cup, where Costa Rica reached the quarter-finals.
The investment made in the leagues of the Middle East, China and the latest ‘retirement home’ destination of the Indian Super League have served little more than as a way for stars to play out their careers. On the flip side, progress has seen Kyrgyzstan, Philippines and even Guam achieve respectable results. The Central Asian nations, by virtue of having been part of the Soviet Union, inherited part of a European-rooted football tradition despite their membership of the AFC, which proves an advantage in some ways over larger countries where the sport is culturally weaker (and in some cases not even the most popular traditional sport). It appears a glass ceiling exists – for instance, out of South-East Asia only Thailand appears capable of taking the next step, by making it into the next round of World Cup qualifiers.
Yet this is a long way from what has been seen in Euro 2016, where despite claims that expansion means dilution, Wales, Northern Ireland, Hungary and Iceland all reached the last 16 – while Albania managed to win a game in their first-ever major tournament. Expansion of competitions such as the World Cup and European Championships was always inevitable and coupled with the gradual professionalisation of European leagues, plus the improvement in countries that have long competed with less distinction, the playing field has been levelled to a certain degree. It is worth noting that this is a tournament where countries with more than decent pedigree such as the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark were absent.
As it was, Iceland and Wales proved to be revelations beyond the wildest dreams of any pundit, although more soberly anyone who has watched the progress of these two countries will say some sort of success was inevitable. Alongside them, the Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland squads were also littered with players who do not feature for the biggest clubs or, for that matter, at the highest level.
European leagues continue to be the main repository for both established and aspiring talent, something recognised by the powerhouses of the AFC as the Australia, Japan, South Korea and Iran national squads all possess players currently based there. An illustration of this has been the move of two established J-League players, Atomu Tanaka and Ryota Morioka, to Europe – with Tanaka moving to Finnish club HJK Helsinki last year, and Morioka joining Polish club Slask Wroclaw midway through 2015-16. Both are playmakers and both have done well in their new homes.
For their established names to find success in Europe can be seen as a mark of the J-League’s quality, but it also highlights the fact that even with the progress of domestic club football in parts of the AFC, people will continue to see the game through the lens of the more traditional European and South American powerhouses. This is the reality that confronts Australia’s vocal ‘Eurosnob-bashers’ who tend also to be among the most prominent ‘Asia optimists’ who have an idealised future for the game in their minds.
Even in Africa, a good deal more depth has been demonstrated in the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations’ qualifying series – with the first-ever competitive win of South Sudan and the surprising results of Mauritania and Swaziland. Even Comoros, a side boasting Millwall midfielder Najim Abdou, has not been noncompetitive. As in Europe, there are no guarantees of qualification. By contrast, it is likely that Asia’s 2018 World Cup representatives and the final four of the 2019 Asian Cup will be the same teams that have dominated the region in recent years. There is yet to be an Iceland-esque fairytale in Asia.
In Asia, Australia has received one of the sweetest deals of all. And it benefits everyone.
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