Now that the end of the year is getting closer to the World Cup in Qatar, for many young Asian fans looking forward to the World Cup, it may be a bit of a surprise for Australia to appear in the Asian qualifier list. In fact, before 2005, Australia also participated in the World Preliminary Tournament in the European zone. It was not until March 2005, by vote, that Australia officially joined the AFC. There are many reasons behind the appearance of a team with all European faces in The Asian arena.
The most immediate reason, of course, is that Australia cannot compete with the strong European teams. Although the physical fitness is almost the same, the gap in strength is too large to qualify for the World Cup. As for the more competitive European Cup, the situation is even more serious. But FIFA cannot set up a special Oceania division for the whole country, after all, there are too few countries that can form a national team and have the strength to participate, only Australia and New Zealand. As a result, the Australian Football Federation can only apply to join the AFC, so that it will be much less difficult to qualify for the World Preliminary Round.
The AFC will accept Australia's application and agree to let it join, also because many Asian countries have their own small calculations. The AFC thought at the time that if Australia could join, the original 4.5 places might be raised to 5, but this idea did not materialize. For Asian countries, first of all, South Korea and Japan are in the leading position in Asia in terms of football development level, and they are not worried about seats. But if you can meet Australia, which is similar to a European team in advance, it is also a good thing to let yourself get more exercise.
Second, many countries in West Asia are not strong enough to secure seats steadily. Coupled with the fact that there are more internal contradictions, it is better to make the situation more chaotic. Perhaps the addition of Australia will disqualify Saudi Arabia and other West Asian teams, which is also what they are happy to see. Finally, in the eyes of Southeast Asian countries, West Asia and East Asian countries have a larger voice, if they can bring Australia to their side, then southeast Asia's right to speak will rise significantly, so they are also happy to see the arrival of Australia.
Therefore, in the relevant voting agenda of the AFC, the issue of whether Australia should join was unanimously approved. However, in addition to the consideration of the competitive level, at the level of interests, Australia has developed in the field of football and other sports for many years, and there are many Places for Asian countries to learn, and at the same time can obtain a lot of economic benefits. I just didn't expect that Australia, which performed very poorly in Europe, came to Asia to be unusually strong. Not only did he hold the world cup qualification in hand, but he also won the Asian Cup.