Six things you need to know about the Socceroos

By Gary Walsh

1: The name is silly

We can blame Sydney journalist Tony Horstead, who in 1967 dubbed an Australian team heading off on a goodwill visit to South Vietnam – bet that really cheered up the locals – as the Socceroos. Somehow it stuck.

We can also blame Australian Rules, rugby league and rugby, all of which call themselves ‘football’, making it difficult for ‘Association football’, to give it its proper name, to claim any great ownership of the word. And it wasn’t until 2005 that the world game was brave enough to call itself ‘football’ in Australia, when it changed its name from the Australian Soccer Federation to Football Federation Australia.

2: Germany has played a substantial role in our World Cup history

Australia’s first qualification for the World Cup finals was in 1974, when West Germany hosted the tournament. Australia played both the hosts and their not-so-friendly neighbours East Germany, and lost to both – 3-0 and 2-0 respectively.

The next time we qualified for the finals, in 2006, Germany was again the host nation. Now we face Germany as our first opponents in South Africa. Spooky.

3: We are ranked 20 in the world

Australia sits 20th in FIFA’s ranking, wedged between Cameroon and Nigeria. That’s six spots below our best ever place, which we reached on September 14 last year. The less said about June 2000, when we plumbed the depths at 92, the better. Compared to our World Cup rivals we’re 14 spots below Germany and five below Serbia, but 12 places ahead of Ghana, which is almost physically wedged between Cameroon and Nigeria. Oh, the synergy.

Australia is 182 places ahead of San Marino, Anguilla, Montserrat, American Samoa (my, how we love them – see below), Central African Republic and Papua New Guinea. There is also the Elo ranking system, in which Australia is placed 18th, with a spectacular and totally inexplicable high of ninth back in 2001, when we were rated as 48th on the FIFA scale.

4: We have been world record holders at both ends of the scale

On June 30, 1951, Australia played England on a waterlogged pitch in Sydney. The Poms knocked a lazy 17 goals past Australia’s hapless goalkeeper, the amusingly named Norman Conquest, who at one point must have looked like letting in an entirely appropriate 1066.

Fast forward to April 2001, and Australia scores 22 goals in a World Cup qualifier against Tonga. A couple of days later they tonked American Samoa to the tune of 31-0, a scoreline which remains the world record for an international match. Archie Thompson’s 13 is also a record. Gee, the Oceania confederation was fun. Up to a point.

5: We were Unofficial World Champions for four days in 1992

The Unofficial Football World Championship was established when Scotland beat England in a British Home Championship match in 1967, the first loss suffered by the Poms after their World Cup win. Scots, therefore, declared themselves unofficial world champions. Nerdy interwebs types then created a UFWC list going back to 1873.

We took over from the US on June 14, 1992, and were supplanted four days later by Argentina. Among the unlikely champions have been Zimbabwe, Georgia and the Netherlands Antilles. Sadly, American Samoa is not on the list. Australia was also Virtual World Champions in 2001 in a competition devised along similar lines. It is, however, virtually useless.

6: Guus Hiddink was a hopeless coach

Statistically, Aussie Guus is only the fifth most successful Socceroos’ boss, with a 58 per cent winning percentage. Aussie Pim Verbeek is better, with a 59 per cent record. Even Aussie Frank Farina, who was useless, had a greater success rate than Hiddink, also at 59 per cent. Aussie El Tel Venables was better still, winning 65 per cent of his matches.

But best of all was Aussie Les Scheinflug, with a 71 per cent winning record. However, it was Aussie Eddie Thomson, who managed to win less than half of his matches in charge, who took us to the Unofficial Football World Championship. Hats off, Aussie Eddie.