The Socceroos love playing for Australia. Why doesn’t Australia love them back?

March 31, 2026 — 4:00am

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There’s never been a better time to get behind the Socceroos.

In June, they’ll play at their sixth consecutive World Cup, and a deep run into the knockout phase is eminently possible. Coach Tony Popovic has assembled a squad with more upside than perhaps any team Australia has sent to the game’s biggest stage: in Nestory Irankunda, Alessandro Circati, Mohamed Toure and Jordan Bos, there is the nucleus of a group that, over the next decade or so, could do some seriously special things.

So why does it feel like people aren’t that interested?

They will be, of course, when the World Cup is on. It’ll be the biggest thing since sliced bread – just like Qatar 2022, when the Socceroos produced their best-ever finish and huge crowds flocked to public squares to watch them at stupid o’clock.

But when the World Cup ended, people moved on. Nothing stuck.

That’s the nature of the public’s transactional relationship with this team: uber-passionate once every four years, and too casual in between.

We are, perhaps, so used to them competing at the World Cup that we take it for granted.

In 2006, when Socceroos qualified for the first time since 1974, 95,103 people........

© Brisbane Times