‘In Asia, We Might Not Speak the Same Language but We All Speak Football’
Huge wins in the 2002 World Cup qualifiers worsened Australian disillusionment with Oceanian football, culminating in their defecting to the Asian Football Confederation three years later.
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This post is part of the ‘Research and Reflections’ occasional series, consisting of pieces based on my ongoing academic research, as well as on my musings on and responses to current affairs and personal developments.
In the previous post in this miniseries, I wrote about the Australian men’s association football team’s record 31-0 victory over American Samoa in 2001, a result that seemed to cause the victors more rancour than their badly defeated opponents.
Australian annoyance at the scale of victories they were racking up against other Oceanian teams – they had beaten Tonga 22-0 a few days before surpassing that precedent against American Samoa – owed to the damage it did to their credibility and prospects on the global stage. The best Australian footballers played for European clubs, who often resented those players travelling to the other side of the world during the season to feature in heavily one-sided wins. Nor did these matches do much to bolster soccer’s domestic popularity, given the fierce competition from other more nationally established sports like Australian rules football, rugby, and cricket. Only 3,000 people attended the win over American Samoa at the International Sports Stadium in Coffs Harbour.
Moreover, the weakness of Oceanian football had meant that despite the World Cup finals tournament’s expansion from 16 to 24 and then 32 teams, FIFA had refrained from granting a direct qualification route for teams from the continent. In qualifiers for the 1986, 1994, and 1998 World Cups, Australia had topped the Oceanian Football Confederation (OFC) qualifying competition, only to then lose out in inter-confederation play-offs against Scotland, Argentina, and Iran respectively. The same fate would eventually befall them again as they fell at the final hurdle of qualification for the 2002 World Cup, losing 3-1 on aggregate against Uruguay.
This post covers the implications that Australia’s heavy victories in qualifying for the 2002 had both for their standing in international football, and for that of Oceanian football more generally. It discusses the proposed and actual reforms to the OFC qualification system – including FIFA granting and then withdrawing a direct Oceanian qualifying place – which ultimately failed to satisfy Australian football’s administrators, and how that in turn led to Australia successfully applying to join the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 2006.
Reforming Oceanian football qualification
In qualifying for 1998, Australia – along with the other three top-ranked sides in Oceania, New Zealand, Fiji, and Tahiti – had enjoyed a bye to the OFC second round, which followed a first round comprised of Polynesian and Melanesian groups. Qualifiers for 2002, by contrast, saw all ten Oceanian teams entered into two groups of five in the first round. Australia’s rout of Tonga immediately fuelled debate as to the wisdom of this format, but these were initially rebutted by the OFC’s Australian president, Basil Scarsella, who insisted that all of the OFC’s members had voted in favour of it. He stressed the value for the continent’s smaller teams in playing the likes of Australia, just as Australia themselves aspired to play the likes of Argentina, Brazil, and Italy. Scarsella also criticised Australia’s previous failure to do enough to support the sport’s development in its island neighbours, given the resources available to it.1
Australia’s subsequent result against American Samoa did little to dampen the debate though, and threatened to jeopardise the OFC’s ability to deal with the matter internally. FIFA’s media spokesperson Keith Cooper opined that pre-qualifiers would likely be reintroduced the next time around:
It’s quite clear that in none of the other five confederations, is the gap between the top and the bottom so large as it is in Oceania. It’s a question of time. The smaller ones will gradually catch up, but right now it’s not serving anybody any useful purpose…It doesn’t do the image of the game any good, really. It doesn’t do the winners any good, it certainly doesn’t do the losers any good. They don’t really learn anything and it should be a learning process.2
FIFA did nonetheless appear to be taking Oceanian football seriously. Having granted Oceania full confederation status at its 50th Congress in 1996, it increased its direct annual funding to the OFC from $250,000 to $2.5 million. Additional financial support to individual members also enabled them to upgrade their facilities, and to attract more coaches from Australia and New Zealand.3 Moreover, with the 53rd Congress taking place in Seoul 2002, and Sepp Blatter, beset by corruption allegations, seeking a second term as FIFA’s president over Confederation of African Football president Issa Hayatou, the prize of a direct qualification spot for Oceania appeared to be on the table. Ahead of Blatter’s scheduled appearance at a May 2002 OFC meeting in Tonga, Scarsella had vouched the confederation’s support for his re-election, given his previous advocacy for a direct Oceanian World Cup qualification route.4
Blatter comfortably defeated Hayatou, and Scarsella’s lobbying seemed to have paid off when a meeting of FIFA’s executive committee in Madrid in December 2002 voted to give an automatic berth at the 2006 World Cup to Oceania. This, and a new playoff spot for the fourth-placed team in the North and Central American and Caribbean qualifiers, came at the expense of South America, where the fifth-placed team in qualification could no longer qualify via a playoff, and Europe, who also lost a playoff spot. Scarsella insisted prior to the meeting on the legitimacy of Oceania’s claim: ‘This is a right, it’s not a handout. It’s not about the best 32 teams, it’s about having everybody represented.’5
Unsurprisingly, the prospective losers from this arrangement saw things differently. South American Football Confederation spokesperson Nestor Benitez, complained:
The tradition and history of the South Americans have been overlooked. What have Africa and Asia done in the history of football? This goes against fair play. It doesn’t respect our history and quality.6
In Britain, investigative sports journalist Andrew Jennings asserted in the Daily Mail that the outcome was a virtually guaranteed qualification spot for Australia, adding: ‘It may be only coincidence but most of the gains made this time have been by allies of FIFA president Sepp Blatter.’7
The OFC, meanwhile, was moving away from the internal maximalist participatory line Scarsella had espoused during the 2002 qualifiers. Of the now twelve Oceanian teams participating in qualification for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Australia and New Zealand would be seeded. The other ten were sorted into two groups of five, with the top two in each of those groups joining the seeds in a second round group of six, and the winner of that second round group ostensibly qualifying directly for the World Cup finals.8
Oceania’s reluctant behemoth
Australia had long been somewhat unenthusiastically Oceanian when it came to football. The Australian Soccer Federation had co-founded the OFC with its New Zealand, Fijian, and Papua New Guinean counterparts in 1966 only after its bid to join the AFC had failed. It withdrew in 1972, with the aim of joining the AFC, only to re-join in 1978. In any case, there was a joint qualifying competition for Asian and Oceanian teams during this period, which Australia had topped to obtain the single place available to teams from both continents for the 1974 World Cup; this would remain their only appearance at a finals for the next three decades. Australian lukewarmness towards the OFC persisted even as the number of Oceanian teams regularly participating in qualification began to increase during the 1990s. In 1996, when the FIFA Congress voted 172-1 to recognise the OFC a fully fledged confederation, that sole dissenter was David Hill, then president of the renamed Soccer Australia.9
There continued to be clamour, both within and beyond Australia, for the country to join the AFC instead. A few days after the 31-0 game, British sportswriter Ian Ridley opined in the Observer: ‘The Aussies, who clearly have the potential to be a top-tier international footballing nation, deserve better than these current, ridiculous mismatches’. He argued that FIFA should reconsider letting Australia participate in the Asian qualifiers instead, and introduce a preliminary qualifying round in European qualification too, ‘as San Marino, Andorra and Liechtenstein are refusing to improve despite the easy money they are trousering from matches against the top nations.’10 Frank Farina also mooted the possibility of Australia entering the Asian qualifiers for the 2006 World Cup, albeit couching this less in terms of disrespect for Oceania’s smaller teams, but rather in frustration with the lack of a direct qualifying route for the continent:
We’re a bit like nomads. We are a confederation but we do not have a spot in the finals, we have half a spot. That in itself is a farce. Either give us a spot or integrate us. It’s not a matter of it being easier, it just makes a lot more sense.11
The prospect of a direct qualifying place therefore seemed to ease this source of tension, although the accusation that this was a still less than optimal outcome resonated with at least some in Australia. Former captain Johnny Warren, for example, described it as ‘lowering the bar when we should be lifting it’. He advocated instead for the wholesale integration of Oceanian teams into the AFC, arguing that the Australian team would be much more competitive for playing against sides like China and Saudi Arabia in front of large crowds.12
Warren would, inadvertently, partly get his wish. Australia’s failure to qualify for the World Cup, along with myriad concerns about governance at Soccer Australia, highlighted through an investigation by ABC, prompted Australian sports minister Rod Kemp to commission a review into the health of the game’s administration. The review panel, chaired by business director David Crawford and including Johnny Warren and Australian Sports Commission CEO Mark Peters, produced its report in 2003, recommending wholesale changes at Soccer Australia, including the instalment of an interim board led by the billionaire shopping centre developer Frank Lowy. Soccer Australia would subsequently be placed into liquidation, with Lowy establishing its successor body the Australia Soccer Association (later renamed Football Federation Australia).
This did little, however, to bolster Oceanian football’s reputation. Nor did New Zealand’s performance in the 2003 Confederations Cup in France, which they qualified for after defeating an understrength Australia in the 2002 OFC Nations’ Cup final. New Zealand subsequently lost all three Confederations Cup group games by an aggregate of eleven goals to one. These factors provided the official rationale for FIFA, just six months after granting the winner of the OFC qualifying group an automatic berth at the World Cup, to retract this promise – its executive committee voting 22-1 in favour of this decision.13 However, this reasoning was hotly contested by the interim administration at Soccer Australia, while coach Frank Farina described it as ‘a political decision…for the good of the superpowers, for the most powerful’. He complained:
What’s the point of having Oceania as a confederation. We may as well disband it now. They have no respect for this region or the people down here. They don’t want to develop the game in this region – they have not even told us what our path will be. They are not thinking about this region, so why have it. We might as well be put into the Asian group.14
Australia’s Asian pivot
David Hill was sceptical that this would come to pass. Writing for The Australian after FIFA’s about-face, he continued to insist on the unviability of Oceania as an independent football confederation, and the rectitude of his prior solitary vote against FIFA recognising it at such seven years previously:
I argued that Oceania was not big enough, or strong enough, and that we all needed the opportunity of playing a range of quality opponents in a larger international soccer family like Asia. It does nothing to help develop soccer in Pacific states – or Australia – for the Socceroos to play and win matches by the margin of 31-nil.
Yet he noted that Australia had unsuccessfully pursued this course for the past thirty years, including during his time as head of Soccer Australia, only to continually find AFC members unreceptive, a situation unlikely to improve given tensions with Asian countries over Australia’s record on issues like granting asylum and the War on Terror.
So where do we go from here? There seems little point in continuing with Oceania; its continued existence will only be used by FIFA as an excuse not to address our problems. And if we can’t open the door to Asia – or South America – perhaps we might look at Israel, who can no longer play in their own continent and have been included by FIFA to play their World Cup qualifiers in Europe. Now wouldn’t that be something.15
Hill’s pessimism about Asia proved unfounded. In March 2005, the AFC accepted in principle an Australian application to join, with its future membership of the confederation ratified by FIFA in June.16 Australian captain Craig Moore welcomed the development, asserting that Australia’s ‘world football standards’ and status as an economic power would ‘increase the image of Asian competition.’17 Both Sepp Blatter and AFC president Mohammed Bin Hammam felt the move would be beneficial all round, with Blatter commenting:
The Oceania delegates have thought for many years that Australia was too powerful and blocked the way of the other 11 countries. Now New Zealand, and the Pacific islands at least have a chance. They can go it alone. I am sure it will be a success.18
The International Herald Tribune’s longstanding sports columnist Rob Hughes put it less kindly that ‘In Oceania, the Australians are perennial kings in a pool that may cover the South Pacific but contains only smaller soccer fishes.’ He predicted that New Zealand’s aspiration of following Australia would make the AFC’s wholesale absorption of Oceania inevitable.19 In contrast to Blatter’s assertion, the New Zealand Soccer Association were rather put out that Australia had successfully pursued the option it was still mulling over. Its secretary Graham Seatter reflected bluntly:
We need to start playing the political influencing game. Australia have done it through resources where they can box in a different position to us. They’ve got a few billionaires on their board, which always helps when you’re dealing with FIFA.20
Hopes in Australia as to the positive impact of this move extended beyond football. Former diplomat Anthony Bubalo, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute – the right-leaning foreign policy think tank set up by one of the billionaires Seatter had referred to, Frank Lowy – told a forum arranged by the institute that Australia’s multiracial team regularly playing Asian opponents would help shift wider opinion on the continent, which continued to be shaped by memories of the ‘White Australia’ immigration policies in place for much of the twentieth century.
This is a chance for Australia to cut through to the grassroots in Asia and transact on a popular level in a way that’s never been done before. In Asia, we might not speak the same language but we all speak football.21
In the meantime, Australia’s final participation in Oceanian World Cup qualifiers would bear long-awaited fruit. They topped the second round group (which also doubled as the Oceania Nations Cup) ahead of the Solomon Islands, who unexpectedly pipped New Zealand for second place. The OFC had updated its format to include a two-legged playoff between first and second, in which Australia beat the Solomon Islands 11-1 on aggregate. This set up an inter-confederation qualification playoff in November 2005 against Uruguay, whom Australia had lost to in qualification for 2002. This time, however, after losing 1-0 away, Australia won 1-0 at home, before defeating the Uruguayans in a penalty shoot-out to make their first World Cup in over thirty years.
Despite being given a tough group at the finals in Germany, featuring future Asian rival Japan, defending champions Brazil, and Croatia (who had come third in 1998), Australia progressed in second place after winning, losing, and drawing against those three opponents respectively. They then faced eventual winners Italy in the second round, only losing 1-0 to a last-minute penalty.
After the tournament, Australian sportswriter David Lewis, writing in the Herald Sun, predicted an even bigger future for football in Australia, having ‘moved from being the bully boy of Oceania to the new kid on the block in Asia’, where they would get to play in higher-profile qualifying fixtures with much larger potential television audiences.22 By 2009, Australia had risen to 16th in the FIFA world rankings; the Australian Associated Press responded by producing a list of sixteen reasons for this achievement, the seventh of which was:
No more rubbish opponents. American Samoa and Solomon Islands have been replaced by quality opposition and regular, meaningful matches. We have become better and more cohesive as a result.23
Australia reached the next four World Cups through the Asian route, but would find the going increasingly tough in doing so. Having made the 2010 World Cup by topping their qualifying group and 2014 by coming second, they only qualified for 2018 and 2022 after coming third in those groups, and narrowly winning playoffs against Syria and the United Arab Emirates respectively. These ironically set up the sort of inter-confederation playoffs that Australia joined the AFC partly to avoid. They beat Honduras 3-1 on aggregate to qualify for the 2018 tournament, and Peru on penalties after a 0-0 draw in a one-off tie to reach the 2022 World Cup. Of those four World Cups, they only again made the second round in 2022, once more losing narrowly to the eventual tournament winner, this time to Argentina, 2-1. At time of writing, Australia have not yet secured qualification for the expanded 2026 World Cup in Canada, Mexico, and the US, although with eight automatic Asian spots available, they are likely to eventually do so.
In a further irony, however, this expansion also means Oceania have now finally been granted that automatic berth they were promised over two decades ago – through which New Zealand have already qualified for the tournament.
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Quoted in Peter Desira, ‘Oceania Won’t Tell Socceroos to Ease Off’, Herald Sun (11 Apr. 2001).
Quoted in ‘FIFA Tips Change after Socceroo Romp’, AAP Newsfeed (11 Apr. 2011).
Michael Cockerill, ‘Sea Change Sweeps the Pacific: A Different Ball Game in Our Own Backyard’, Sydney Morning Herald (25 Jan. 2002).
‘Troubled Blatter Makes South Pacific Swing’, Associated Press (18 May 2002).
Quoted in ‘Oceania Given World Cup Spot’, AAP Newsfeed (17 Dec. 2002).
Quoted in Andrew Jennings, ‘No Worries, Mate: Australia Virtually Given 2006 Spot as Blatter Allies Profit’, Daily Mail (18 Dec. 2002). Neither Africa’s nor Asia’s number of slots changed, making Benitez’s complaint rather irrelevant and probably a bit racist.
Jennings, ‘No Worries, Mate’.
‘Australia and New Zealand Seeded Away from Oceania Minnows’, Agence France Press (21 Mar. 2003).
Cockerill, ‘Sea Change Sweeps the Pacific’.
Ian Ridley, ‘Roos May Rue 31-Goal Glut’, Observer (15 Apr. 2001).
‘Australia Coach Backs Asian Route to World Cup’, Agence France Presse (6 Jun. 2001).
Quoted in Ray Chesterton, ‘Warren Calls World Cup Easy Option a Bad Choice – ‘It is Lowering the Bar when We Should be Lifting It’’, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) (23 Dec. 2002).
David Hill, ‘Forget Asia, Look to Europe’, The Australian (2 Jul. 2003).
Michael Lynch, ‘FIFA Cave-in ‘a Disgrace’, The Age (30 Jun. 2003).
David Hill, ‘Forget Asia, Look to Europe’.
Rob Hughes, ‘Australia Moves Closer to Asia’, International Herald Tribune (24 Mar. 2005); ‘Way Clear to Aussie Migration into Asia’, Gold Coast Bulletin (1 Jul. 2005).
Quoted in Hughes, ‘Australia Moves Closer to Asia’.
Quoted in ‘Way Clear to Aussie Migration into Asia’.
Hughes, ‘Australia Moves Closer to Asia’.
Quoted in Hughes, ‘Australia Moves Closer to Asia’.
Quoted in Neil Sands, ‘‘Football Diplomacy’ to Boost Australia’s Standing in Asia’, Agence France Presse (19 Oct. 2005).
David Lewis, ‘World Game v Our Game: Soccer Will Get Bigger’, Herald Sun (27 Jun. 2006).
Guy Hand, ‘Sixteen Reasons why Socceroos are in the World’s Top 16’, AAP Newsfeed (2 Jul. 2009).