The Australia national football team was founded in 1922 and was governed by the Australian Football Federation. The first friendly international match was played against New Zealand on June 17, 1922 where Australia was beaten 1-3. The team has a nickname ‘The Socceroos’, deriving from ‘soccer’ and ‘roos’ which means kangaroos.
In 1966 the Australian team made its debut in qualification tournament for the World Cup but failed to pass through. The team reached the World Cup finals in 1974 where played a draw with Chili and then was defeated by West Germany and East Germany and as a result couldn’t leave the group.
Australia is the member of the Oceania Football Federation and played in the OFC Nations Cup since 1980 till 2004 and became the winners four times (in 1980, 1996, 2000 and 2004).
Since 1997 the team participates in the FIFA Confederations Cup. That year the squad finished runners-up, losing to Brazil 0-6. Later, in 2001, Australia defeated Brazil 1-0 and obtained the third place.
The Socceroos managed to qualify for the World Cup in 2006 being guided by Guus Hiddink. After the championship the Australia national team proclaimed that it wanted to join the Asian Football Confederation because the FIFA doesn’t provide Oceania with straight way to the World Cup while head to head games with South America representatives are hard to win.
The most famous players are Zeljko Kalac, Tim Cahill, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwarzer, Luke Wilkshire and others. Today the team is ranked 23rd in the FIFA World Ranking.
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