A Week in Football: Now the real show begins

Here you go... Australia's path the South Africa 2010 is littered with pot holes (Getty Images)

Australia’s World Cup campaign has rounded its first lap, concluding with the meaningless game against China in Sydney, and now the real excitement begins.

If you thought 70,000 turning up at the ANZ Stadium on the off-chance some able-limbed Socceroos might actually show up was impressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Wait till the Uzbeks, Bahrain and our old mates from Qatar, not to mention the Japanese, come calling on the next lap. Lock up your daughters. The risk of letting them mingle with hordes drunk on the prospect of their beloved Socceroos making it to South Africa will be potentially calamitous.

If I were the FFA, I would program all four home games in the next phase in the biggest possible stadium in the land, so high will be the demand for tickets.

The panting is already underway. The draw to determine whom Australia will play on this precarious last lap got us all more sexed up than we have been since, probably, we waited on FIFA’s verdict on Harry Kewell’s fate after his post-match spray at Markus Merk in Munich two years ago.

The figures show it. Michelle Chai, the AFC’s competitions director, became our pin-up girl as she twirled those plastic spheres and plucked out the names of our next World Cup opponents.

Already, even before she did, the story previewing the draw was the most read article on this website last week, surpassing anything the glamorous and superb European Championship could gather.

Only just though. Four Euro stories crept into the top ten with Spain’s hoodoo ending shootout win over Italy ranking number two.

Coming in third was a fascinating interview with John Aloisi describing the bench methods of Guus Hiddink, written just before Guus’ Russians were to go into their second Euro showdown against Spain.

In fourth place was the report late in the week on the outcome of the World Cup draw, a story which would surely have ranked higher had Pim Verbeek been able to attend and give some reactions. Instead the quotes came from high performance boss John Boultbee, a fine rower in his day.

That story was closely followed, in fifth spot, by Philip Micallef’s on the spot tally of reactions from the camps of the four other countries in Australia’s group. Bring us on, they all said.

For the sixth top story it was back to the Euros and the report on Germany’s thrilling 3-2 win over Turkey, one of the best games of the tournament.

An earlier report, leading up to the draw in Kuala Lumpur, and naming Australia and South Korea as the seeds, ranked in seventh spot.

Then, for the number eight story, it was back to the future as Micallef quizzed Boultbee on how Australia would prepare for the eight crunch matches over the next 15 months.

What emerged is that the FFA, as it did in 2005, will leave nothing to chance and spare no expense in giving the coach and the players all the preparatory support they need. Pim, in other words, will have no excuses if the team fails.

Imagine if this was the attitude of the bosses back in 1985 when Frank Arok wanted to take Scotland north to the tropics for a home qualifier but was refused because, politically, it was the turn of Melbourne, and its billiard table playing surface, to host the game.

The Socceroos, dismal and impotent against China in Sydney, got some unexpected support from former captain Craig Moore who, in the ninth most read article, contended that Verbeek was right to try out the young fringe men.

They had to be given the chance to step up, said Moore. The problem is they didn’t.

Finally, at number ten, it was back again to Vienna where Spain, in their most dazzling display of the tournament, breezed into the final of Euro 2008 with a 4-1 waltz over Russia.

Hiddink apparently didn’t have a Cahill and an Aloisi to bring on.

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