Often supporting a national sporting team can seem very exclusive  Sport can seem like a kind of war. Especially when the two countries playing each other don’t like each other. In countries like Scotland, people support teams sometimes because of their religion: whether they are Protestant or Catholic. The Australian national soccer team is a bit different though, because soccer is popular all over the world. Soccer in Australia has always had lots of involvement from people from all different background. In fact, before the A-League was invented, many of the top Australian clubs were started by different migrant groups in the Australian community and were named after clubs or places in Europe, like Sydney Olympic, Melbourne Croatia and Marconi. Australian soccer has been shown on SBS for many years, the TV station which caters to different ethnic communities. The most prominent presenter of soccer on SBS is Les Murray, who was a refugee from Hungary. Les is a supporter of ethnic diversity and refugees in Australia. He’s on this video.

Because of where their parents were born, many famous Australian players could have played for other countries. For example, Tim Cahill played for Samoa when he was 14, Mark Viduka could have played for Croatia, and Bruce Djite could play for the USA, Ivory Coast, Togo or Australia!

There are also lots of prominent Australian players with Greek, Italian, Lebanese and Indigenous heritage, among many others. As well as this, there are many young players born in Africa and now living in Australia. Kofi Danning, who plays for Sydney FC is a great example. He was born in Ghana and is now one of the stars of Sydney FC. All of these players help to make the Socceroos a much better representation of Australia than some of our other sporting teams. So when  we watch the Socceroos play, we don’t have to think of the old Australia, which saw itself as a European country, but the new Australia, which is full of diversity.

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