Aussies don't think AFL is the greatest game in the world.  You might even struggle to win that poll in Melbourne.  No hope north of the Murray.

Wouldn't mind seeing your list of "world class sports" though.
I mean, are there any really other than football?

Basically everyone we play has a better first touch.
Not just the arab countries. I'm talking Indonesia etc for pitys sake.
It s ridiculous.

Even our much touted young Socceroos are worse than their junior opponents so I don't see it changing for another while yet

Two things I'd like to add:

1. Aussies just are not as good at sport as they think they are. Look at AFL - you can never play teh game at all and be a star in two years, Yet they think it's the greatest game in the world. Plus we dont really dominate anything that's a truly world class sport - cricket in patches maybe and who plays that?

2. The football fraternity pulls in opposite directions (for various reasons). Much to our detriment. If we were unified we'd be unstoppabale. 

Internationally I think was 2014. But 2010 was when he wanted to be the one to Carini instead of Muslera

I wonder which one of our players Suarez would have taken a bite out of,,,, or was that 2014?

And if we won that, I believe Uruguay... what a story that would have been

Very true that!
We were 1-0 up at the time. It gifted Ghana a penalty, and despite playing a player down for the remaining 65 minutes, they couldn't score again.
Not unreasonable to think had that "handball" not been called, with no penalty and no red card for Harry, we would have at least continued with the 1-0 scoreline to win the match.
That would have put us 2nd in the group, we would have got out of the group for 2 WCs in a row, and would have faced USA in the 2nd round.

Very true, and why I still place Kewell, Dukes, Zelic and Okon amongst my four best ever socceroos.
Dukes is much maligned, but for a man of his size, his touch and ball control was exceptional.

Having watched since 1981-82 one constant in the Socceroos players is the poor first touch. Watching the Socceroos is like watching nine Dirk Kuyt's on the pitch. An Australian player with a good first touch is still the exception not the rule.  You can pick him a mile away.

Even the Arabs now ave a better first touch. 

Every football skill follows from having a good first touch. Yet 40 years later we are still just as shit at it.

Also whatever prick in 2010 said Harry had handballed on the line when it was clearly his shoulder. That made a critical difference to our tournament.

Not least because that total arse Cantelayo called a penalty on Lucas after Grosso had taken two extra steps before leaving a trailing leg and falling over.

What a gyp!!!!

Adding 2006 to the sample makes the totals look like this:
Success rate:
South America: 17/20 = 85% (Amazing! Over the last 16 years, only three times has a South American team failed to get out of the group stage)
North America: 7/14 = 50% 
Europe: 32/54 = 59.2%
Asia: 3/17 = 17.6%
Africa: 4/21 = 19%
Oceania: 1/2 = 50% (Admittedly a very small sample size. Considering this is out of 4 world cups, might be fair to say 1/4, and therefore 25% instead)

Checked this morning. Yes it was Chippers. (I got confused by Kewell's point blank shot in the Brazil match.)

What a disaster Kewell didn't play for us in that game. We've had rotten luck at WCs. 

Ah yes. Just remembered that. Nevertheless someone had a point blank rocket straight at Buffon. Will look it up tomorrow.

I don't remember the chance, but Emerton was suspended for the game so it must have been Chipperfield you are thinking of. Also, Kewell didn't play against Italy because he was injured, so it couldn't have been him who missed a point blank chance.

I think it was Chippers.

I seem to remember also Emerton or Chipperfield smashing one straight at Buffon at some point in the game....

Ah but if Kewell had have kicked his point blank shot just 1 foot left or right of the GK we would have have been 1 up.

Luca Toni could have wrapped up the game in the opening 15 minutes, missing chances he'd normally take 9 out of 10 times.

Twice Culina had two cream puff strikes in the first half so the chances were there but who's going to take them?

This is a really  informative post, Petszk. 

Thanks for doing the research.

For a bigger sample size it would be useful to have done this for the 2006 WC in Germany, and after the Qatar WC too.

I'm really gobsmacked at North America  getting out of WC groups as much as they have? 

The Honduras we played for 2018 WC Russian entry, was easily the weakest intercontinental opponent we have had to play in sudden death play offs,  compared to Uruguay or Peru in the last five WC campaigns. I don't think we have ever had a CONCACAF opponent at any WC we've qualified for?  
 
Is it fair to say we've had harder groups  than average at WCs? Every one of the 8 WC groups has at least one powerhouse.  Yet in 2014 we had Spain and Netherlands, 2 European powerhouses - and  - Chile, who I think were South American intercontinental champs at the time?

2010 was a tough group too. Maybe 2018 was a bit easier, and we couldn't finish to save ourselves? 

I also had no idea, that Paraguay or  Colombia had ever  progressed past the group stages either? I thought Chile had only one done it once in our group in 2014, but not twice? Knocking out Uruguay  and Peru makes it even more meritorious for  the Socceroos to  knock out CONMEBOL teams twice from WC entry. 

As I said, if you're losing 2-0 to Italy, you really ain't much chop.

Well concluded Petszk and agree that measuring success at WC level is a difficult beast but your method is as fair as any Ive seen on here lately.
Whats glaringly obvious is that if Japan never had their "new dawn" and 100 year plan the Asian confederation (with or without Australia in it) would be ALOT further down the pile....  One nation is literally carrying a whole continent+ a few outside islands on its own shoulders.....

depth matters too right? If you put brazil in oceania their ratio would look pretty good too but it doesn't mean america samoa need a world cup spot

If you replaced Japan with Brazil it also wouldn't change our world cup qualification chances either

since the original context was about how impressive it is to qualify 5 times in a row, the best way to measure this is the strength of each confederations team that finishes with a .5 place (or just misses out if a confederation gets a whole number of places)

Agree with most of this.
IMO, the best way to measure the "strength" of a confederation is to check their success rate at getting out of the group stage of the WC.
Since 50% of the teams get eliminated in the group stage and 50% go on to the 2nd round, this is a pretty good indicator. 
If everything was equal, each confederation would have 50% of their teams eliminated in the group stage and 50% of their teams proceed to the 2nd round.
So if a confederation has a >50% success rate, by definition they're a stronger-than-average confederation, and <50% success rate means they're weaker than average.


Over the past 3 world cups;
2018
Succeeded in the group stage;
South America: Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia
Europe: Russia, Spain, Portugal, France, Denmark, Croatia, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, England
North America: Mexico
Asia: Japan

Eliminated in the group stage;
Asia: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Australia, South Korea
Africa: Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, Senegal
South America: Peru
Europe: Iceland, Serbia, Germany, Poland
North America: Costa Rica, Panama

2014
Succeeded in group stage;
South America: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina
North America: Mexico, Costa Rica, USA
Europe: Netherlands, Greece, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium
Africa: Nigeria, Algeria

Eliminated in group stage;
Europe: Croatia, Spain, Italy, England, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Portugal, Russia
Africa: Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana
Asia: Australia, Japan, Iran, South Korea
South America: Ecuador
North America: Honduras

2010
Succeeded in group stage;
South America:  Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile
North America: Mexico, USA
Europe: England, Germany, Netherlands, Slovakia, Portugal, Spain
Africa: Ghana
Asia: South Korea, Japan
Eliminated in group stage;
Europe: France, Greece, Slovenia, Serbia, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland
Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast
Asia: Australia, North Korea
North America: Honduras
Oceania: NZ

Success rate:
South America: 14/16 = 87.5% (Amazing! Over the last 12 years, only twice has a South American team failed to get out of the group stage)
North America: 6/10 = 60% (This is also a surprise, I didn't realise how successful NA has been recently).
Europe: 22/40 = 55%
Asia: 3/13 = 23%
Africa: 3/16 = 19%
Oceania: 0/1 = 0% (Admittedly a very small sample size)

Going by this... South America and North America have a claim to get more spots at the world cup, at the expense of Asia & Africa. Or at least - when the world cup expands to 40 countries, these confederations are the ones most deserving of getting the extra spots.

If the FFA/FA were smart, they would liaise w/the State Feds on strategising localised approaches to promoting/growing the game ie. that are considerate of the respective idiosyncrasies.

Put simply, the current approach in use ever since the Crawford Report has pretty much done its job insofar as NSW and QLD(prob the ACT too) are concerned bc ⚽ traditionally was always that much more accepted as part of the Oz sporting furniture compared to in the AFL states, where the 'w0gb@ll' stigma still remains due to the whole 'AFL is our indigenous homegrown code and if it dies here, it dies everywhere' rhetoric..

Bottom-line is that ⚽-lovers from the AFL states are much more likely to be of a non-Skip background than their RL/RU state counterparts, so why don't FFA strategise accordingly? It only makes sense💡

Asian women's football is so weak that 40 European nations are ranked lower than China.

Yeh, well, Asian womens football is so strong.
So strong, no Asian teams made the quarter finals last womens world cup.
China lost 2-0 to Italy in the round of 16, and Italy has been a pretty weak team in womens football for the last 30 years.

In conclusion, the Chinese women are doing better than the men - which isn't saying a whole lot.

So crap but champions of women Asian football 

For all the talent they had I don’t think the GG were a great team, I remember we played a lot of long balls when trying to score as we didn’t have alot of creativity outside of Kewell and Bresc to create clear cut chances.
Even the Italy game when we played with an extra player in the second half we didn’t look like creating a chance against the Italians and we had little off the bench.

The Brazil game we created very little outside of the long range shot from Kewell.

The Japan game we were pumping long balls with those guys up front and by passing the midfield towards the later end of the match.

So yes the GG were a great generation of fantastic players and Hiddink as the tactician but we didn’t play a style that top nations weren’t bothered by us.

Ange P’s team from 2014-2015 was the best football I’ve seen the Socceroos play on an international level.