Socceroos World Cup hero calls for greater 'grassroots' investment in Australian football

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In the wake of the Socceroos' inspiring performance in Qatar, Craig Goodwin says Australian football needs increased funding in junior development if the national teams are to be more competitive on the international stage.

According to Goodwin, junior development must be a key priority for Australia as football's most powerful nations already invest heavily in coaching.

"In Europe and South America … all the professional teams have these academies with quality coaching that they're getting from a young age. They're just getting so much more football and games into their legs, and learning things a lot sooner. "That was the biggest difference when it came to the high quality with France and Argentina, and a lot of the other top teams as well.

"It just shows that we do have a lot of quality within our ranks. We hope it inspires the next generation to do bigger and better things."Goodwin scored the Socceroos' opening goal at the World Cup during their 4-1 loss to defending champions France in the group stage."Now that it's over, you can look back on it and there is obviously a lot of joy and pride about what we were able to achieve, but the whole thing has been a bit of a whirlwind to be honest," he said.

 

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Invest in a new goal keeper, he lost us the game, with that second goal disaster, too afraid to pickup up the ball.

Parent can't afford to invest any more money I'm afraid. At a price of $600 for the year, I think I'll encourage the kids to take up footy

It’s “football”, not “soccer”. The game is played with your foot and you kick the ball with it. Football. See? Thank you.

Yep sure, throw all the prize money you won back into grass roots. $13million USD.

Or maybe just a home for Aussie soccer. Don't all the other big sports have one? Come on Aussie, and F my ABC.

Look it up Australian federal government already funds soccer, maybe management need to look how they spend it.

Australian government loved footy more than soccer.

isn’t soccer like the 1 youth sport in the country? (Not looking this up, the fact that I believed it says everything about society and nothing about me)

100% - Australia needs to jump onto the world game, the comparison on how much the government funding NRL/AFL (games that are not even played all around Australia - let alone around the world). Soccer should receive at minimum the same amount of money.

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