One day out from the start of the A-League Women’s season, Ange Postecoglou has delivered a sobering message to Australian football supporters, arguing that the Matildas’ success won’t bring any long-lasting benefit or investment for the local game.
The former Brisbane Roar and Socceroos coach now manages in the Premier League, where his Tottenham side are top of the table after eight games.
“When you look at what the Matildas did at the World Cup: unbelievable,” he said. “But you still won’t see an influx of resources to the game. You won’t, I guarantee it.”
The Matildas finished fourth at their home Women’s World Cup this year and their semi-final defeat against England was the most-watched program on Australian television – sport or otherwise.
“I just don’t think the nation as a whole has that inside them to understand you can make an impact on the world of football, but it requires a kind of nationalistic approach that I just don’t think Australians at their core are really interested in,” Postecoglou said.
His comments are in contrast to what he said during the tournament. In the week of the Matildas’ semi-final in August, he said it was a “rare moment” football had Australia’s attention and the coverage had been “brilliant”. “Hopefully it’s everlasting.”
This week he was less optimistic about the obstacles facing Australian football: “It’s kind of insurmountable, you can’t make the necessary steps.”
Postecoglou believes the combination of the strength of the other football codes in Australia, with the global nature of football, means the sport in Australia has not been able to take off, and still won’t.
“I just don’t see it,” he told reporters. “I don’t think it registers. You guys are only talking about it because of me.”
Football Australia and the APL, the operator of the A-Leagues, have tried to ramp up lobbying for more public resources in the past year.
Football Australia has claimed its Legacy23 strategy planned around the Women’s World Cup had unlocked more than $350m in government investment. The APL developed its first major funding submission to the federal government this year, seeking $12m. Nothing has been committed yet.
Postecoglou said any new football facilities that did arrive would be shared with other codes, and that Australia’s level of investment paled into comparison with those of its Asian rivals where football occupies a similar stature.
“If I can compare that to a country like Japan who also have the tyranny of distance – and baseball’s pretty strong – they plant a lot of resources into football and you can see that that’s making an impact,” he said. “I don’t see Australia down that road.”
Postecoglou is one of the most prominent voices in Australian football, having established himself as a respected figure in England after stops in Scotland and Japan. He left his role as coach of the Socceroos before the 2018 World Cup, just six days after securing qualification, citing the toll of the job “personally and professionally”.
The 58-year-old revisited that period this week, saying he had given up the “fight” for Australian football after being “frustrated for so long”.
“One of my major drivers for doing what I did was to do that, to change football in Australia,” he said. “And that’s the reason I left, I felt I hadn’t made an impact at all.”
But he also believes that had he not resigned from his Australian role when he did, he wouldn’t have ended up coaching in the Premier League.
“It was the right decision for where I saw the next stage of my career,” he said. “And if I didn’t make that decision at that time, if I had waited until after the World Cup, I’ve got no doubt I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”
Tottenham resume their campaign after the international break with a match at home to Fulham. Under Postecoglou, Spurs have posted their highest points tally after eight games since the start of the Premier League era in 1992.
The Socceroos play England in a friendly on Friday evening at Wembley Stadium in London, Saturday morning in Australia.
