Is it time to put soccer out of our misery in this country? I'm just asking is all. It's just that we go through this every four years. Well, I don't. And millions of others don't. But the sad, bug-eyed fanaticism of those few lonely, desperate and destined-to be-disappointed soccer loons is getting to be too much for even one such as me to bear. And my lack of caring about soccer is a vast, airless echo chamber of not caring. Possibly vaster.

So Germany beat us. SFW. We've always beaten them where it counted. At Alamein, on the Western front, and I reckon we'd totally beat their Teutonic arsenböttoms at Eurovision song writing if we were allowed in. But they were always going to beat us in soccer, the same way that Algeria or the Virgin Islands or the Seychelles or whoever we play next is also going to pound us to pink jelly.



As a humane society, I think it's wrong that we allow this cruelty to go on. Soccer will never be anything more than a minority pursuit in Australia, and we will never be anything more than a lame joke internationally. It doesn't matter how many times the game is restructured. It doesn't matter how much sponsorship is poured in. It doesn't matter how much Australian soccer fans really, really, really want the national team to do well. It's never going to happen.

Remember the great Simpsons joke about the football match to decide the most powerful sporting nation in the world, Uruguay or Paraguay, or Portugal or whatever? It's funny because it's true. Sort of. It's never going to happen for England. It will only occasionally happen for Germany. So what the hell makes us think it would ever happen for us? The best thing for everyone, I think, is if we have a word with the Ruddbot and get him to tweak his net censorship legislation, so that the interwebz are no longer illegal, but kicking a round ball about a muddy field while being watched by half a dozen sad faced obsessives is no longer allowed.



Soccer will never go anywhere in Australia because the base is not there and never will be. Why not? Because soccer's weakness in this country is self reinforcing. A great rugby player, a great league player, an AFL champion, they might move from club to club, but there is no need for them to ever set foot outside the country to earn a living. Fans can head down to the local park on the weekend knowing that they have a good chance of seeing some of the best talent in the world. For a great soccer player, however, Australia is the arse end of the world. They have no choice. They have to leave if they are to play the game as well as it can be played.



And for as long as the cream of our talent is drawn to Europe, the local game will remain nothing but an oddity and a joke. I guess if you need an excuse to stay up all night every four years, it's not a bad thing. But that's why we have the Olympics. Or even the Winter Olympics. Where we have more chance of winning something than we will be in South Africa over the next two weeks.