Last night’s decision by FIFA to hand Qatar the 2022 World Cup was bitterly disappointing for Australia. Personally I thought the USA would win. Neither Qatar or Australia had credentials to match the Americans.
However, I have no doubt Australia will one day host a World Cup and it will be one of the most anticipated and best events ever. But the game needs further development in Australia before FIFA will grant us the holy grail of events.
You’ve got to remember that in 2003 – just seven short years ago – Australia didn’t have a national football league. To make matters worse, the national team struggled for quality games and had only appeared at one world cup way back in 1974.
Here was a sport that was completely shunned by the Australian public in preference of our other football codes. For decades. Even today, the large majority of Australians can’t watch football on free-to-air television.
Yes, hosting a world cup would grow the game enormously in this country. But do we really need the extravagance of a world cup to grow the game? If we do then maybe that’s why we missed out on 2022.
Maybe FIFA thinks we can do a better job to develop the code in Australia before it awards us the big one? Either way, everyone knows that for the football world to take us seriously, we as a nation need to take our football seriously. That means making the A-League one of the top football codes in Asia. Big crowds, great players, bums on seats, big broadcast deals and a business swagger that the AFL has.
All this doesn’t explain why Qatar were awarded the world cup, but let’s use this decision by FIFA as motivation to grow the game in Australia and make it impossible for the world to knock us back next time.
While I tend to agree with you that growth of the game in Australia can only benefit the chances of Australia hosting a World Cup, I’m not sure either of us are correct.
The two things that appear to be most important regarding the awarding of the World Cup are power behind the scenes and a growth market. Australia needs to start trying to get influence with the important people first and foremost.
The idea of a growth market is reflected in the AFL’s decision to expand to Western Sydney rather than go to Tasmania. Essentially, there’s not much room for growth in Tassie. The AFL (the league) recognised that AFL (the sport) had strong interest and followers in Tassie already and moving a team there wouldn’t increase the following/dollar opportunities by that much.