Our soccer slump is due to some hard facts, not sneaky refs

* DEMOGRAPHER: Bernard Salt
* From: The Australian
* June 24, 2010

IN the last World Cup Australia was dudded by a referee who was duped into awarding a free kick to an Italian player, who faked a foul.

In our next game, against Germany, Australia was again on the receiving end of a dodgy call by a referee, who unfairly red-carded striker Tim Cahill. One week after that episode Harry Kewell was sent off after a referee's dubious interpretation of the handball rule.

Gosh, Australia has had bad luck with referees in the World Cup, don't you think? Or at least this is the narrative that many seem only too willing to believe.

And if it isn't the referees who are agin us, it's all the fault of the coach. Pim Verbeek just doesn't get it.

Hey, Australia, I've got a really novel explanation as to why we aren't achieving the soccer success we think are entitled to. Are you ready for this? Perhaps the reason we aren't winning matches is because the players

on the other side are better at playing soccer than the players on our side. Perhaps it's not the referee's fault, perhaps it's not the coach's fault, perhaps we're just not good enough.

Here's a bold assessment. In the 2006 World Cup campaign Australia was not so much good as lucky. (Rather like the way we are now viewing the Kiwi success. And why aren't those nasty referees picking on them like they pick on us?) Our early success in the world game and on the world stage went straight to our pretty little colonial heads; we believed for four years that we were genuine contenders.

To think that Australia was a chance for anything other than a thrashing from Germany in this year's World Cup is evidence of rampant naivety. Germany is a developed nation of 80 million with soccer more or less that country's single code of football.

We have one-quarter of the population and four codes of football (NRL, Union, AFL and soccer) among which to divide young male sporting talent. With these stark demographics Australia can only ever hope to be moderately successful at the world game on the world stage.

The problem I have is not so much the naivety of our thinking as our readiness to put forward excuses when we lose. Sometimes, Australia, you lose because you are not good enough. We are not destined to win every contest. We are not special. And when we do lose, more often than not it's because the other team is better.

Mind you, when we do win, Australia can be insufferable in victory. Ask the Poms how gracious they think we are when we win the Ashes. Through luck as much as effort and skill, Australia got through to the knockout round in the 2006 World Cup and it triggered an avalanche of media hype, sponsorships and, I suspect, government funding.

I have a theory that the remote colony of Australia developed an obsession with sport, and an inflated view of our sporting ability, in the glory years after World War II. Here was a time when our athletes, swimmers and tennis players dominated world sporting events. In contemporary parlance Australia punched above its sporting weight.

But perhaps the reason we did so well then was because Australia survived WWII better than did many European nations. In those years we had a bigger pool of talent that had access to resources and to leisure time. This gave us early sporting success and it played right into our deep psychological need for recognition -- any recognition -- on the world stage.

I suspect we are not alone in this sporting colonial cringe. I suspect New Zealanders are cock-a-hoop with their World Cup success. I bet, like Australians four years ago, they are right now all becoming experts in soccer.

I wouldn't be surprised if funding were made available for the promotion of the game in New Zealand. The problem is, this creates a level of expectation that can be brought back to earth with a rather nasty thud at the next World Cup.

Our experience with the World Cup merely highlights that the unifying characteristic of being Australian is not adherence to some syrupy notion of mateship. I think it is the prevalence of delusion.

We think we are important when, clearly, our demographics, and often our contemporary sporting outcomes, suggest something quite different.

Only an island nation tucked away on the edge of the planet could develop such a delusional world view.

Bernard Salt is a KPMG Partner

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/world-cup-2010/our-soccer-slump-is-due-to-some-hard-facts-not-sneaky-refs/story-fn4l4sfy-1225883399427