Ep. 2 - Multiculturalism: 2006 World Cup, Socceroos v Croatia and the historical tapestry | How one match changed a nation

Hello, I'm Richard Bayless from OptaSport. Welcome to Episode 2 of Football Belongs, Multiculturalism. The chapter that accompanies this episode written by John Dillitzer is available to read now on the OptaSport app and website. If you missed the first chapter, the outsiders, it's still available and so too of course is the first podcast episode for any time you like. That's enough for me. For now, it's over to your host, David Davidovich. Thanks once again to OptaSport's Richard Bayless. In the opening podcast, John Dillitzer set the scene for the Football Belongs series alongside Andy Harper and Tracy Holmes. Episode 2 focuses on Multiculturalism by the prism of the dramatic 2006 World Cup match, watched by five million Australians, Sockerous versus Croatia in Stuttgart. One of our special guests featured in that game. The other didn't. No prizes for guessing. John Aloeesi, the Sockerous legend, joins us along with Australian Public Policy Academic Andrew Weir, who authored Solved a book that labels Australia a successful Multicultural Experiment. John has written this series, John Dillitzer, that is, of football Belongs chapters and like myself and tens of thousands of Australian Croatians was torn during that match, even more so because his brother Joey was representing Croatia. The Sockerous squad boasted a number of ex-NSL and Victorian Premier League teammates and opponents for that matter, including childhood friend and North Jolong product Yosip Scoco. John Dillitzer, we'll start with you and your recollections of this match itself. Yeah, I don't recall being fervently torn, David. I'll just say that I was pretty strongly in the Australian camp. Which I've never been able to explain why. I think maybe my football journey had been through Australia and had so many close contacts on the Australian team, notwithstanding the fact that my brother was actually playing for Croatia at the time. So I've never really got my head around my visceral reaction to wanting Australia to win, but maybe it's because we ultimately did go through. I jumped on the bandwagon pretty quickly, but certainly being in Stuttgart feels like it was yesterday. It was certainly one of the most moving 24 hours that I've experienced. I had two pretty amazing experiences prior to that that I'd consider. I always said they're on par with becoming a father. That was one of our guests, John, screwing their penalty at the Sydney Olympic Stadium, which was quite surreal, but the gaming crisis allowed them to open the World Cup against Japan. I've never experienced an out-of-body experience like I experienced that afternoon. It was an incredible day. It was hot. We're down until the 77th minute. Tim comes on and scores two goals. I guess Mr. Alamosi comes up with the third, and it was delirium. Again, for the next 24 hours, it was just surreal as the only way you can describe it. Then you had to go on this journey and two weeks later or probably ten days later. You're in, you're heading into Stuttgart and you've got Australia versus Croatia. The weight of history to which that match was anchored was palpable. So it wasn't something that on reflection, you'd look back and thought, well, hang on, that was a pretty special moment, which often is the case. You're not in the present, in the moment, you're not seeing the history, but everybody walking to that stadium that had a background like ours felt it. It was immense. The historical tapestry that was woven together for that game is hard to replicate. In a moment, it told the story of an entire nation, or the modern story of our nation, and we don't tell the story of football through that lens often enough. John Loweesi scored 27 goals in 55 Sockaro's games, and it excludes the most important strike of the lot, which you just alluded to. John did let's say the Uruguay penalty. The Uruguay penalty, that is that broke Australia's 32-year world cup drought. Now, John Loweesi, you played in the Premier League Serie A La Liga on bigger occasions in huge stadiums. Take us back to that night in Stuttgart and the significance of it. Look, it meant so much to us, because our dream was obviously as kids was to play in a World Cup, and a lot of us, that was our third attempt of trying to get to a World Cup. Once we qualified, it was like we want to get through this group stage to show the world that Australians can play football. That game against Croatia meant a lot to many players because they come from Croatian heritage and to the majority of the squad, if not all the squad, because it was probably going to be our last attempt at a World Cup. We knew we only needed a point to get through, and for us to actually end up qualifying and getting through that group stage, which was a tough group when you look at it in a Croatia. They were European powerhouses at that time. We all remember the 98 World Cup, how well they did. For us to get through that group with Brazil in their end Japan, that was Asian Champions, was a significant achievement. When that night there was special because we got to experience not only getting through, but the atmosphere that I, you know, there's a few games in my career that I remember the atmosphere. That night against Uruguay is one. The Spanish Cup final when I played Vosasuna against Real Betis is another, and the Croatian game, because it was a huge crowd, and Halfam was red and white, and the other Halfam was gold, and just the noise during the game, and then after the game, when we were celebrating, was something that we'll live with me forever. And did you get that sense of occasion, broadly speaking, the occasion that John did, let's just discuss it, and all the attached emotion and significance? Yeah, we did. I did, especially because I was close with a lot of the Croatian boys that, you know, it's funny because I'll delve into a little bit more. When we're growing up in Australia, we're classed, well, I was growing up as an Italian, and I know the Croatian boys were the same, that they were like everyone knew them as, you know, the Croatian boys in the Socaru squad, or in the New South Wales team, or the Victorian team, or South Australian team. When we went overseas, or especially into those countries where our background was from, and when I went back to Italy to play, I was then looked at as an Australian. So, you know, I could see that the Croatian boys wanted to be Croatia as much as anyone else because of that as well, because they were Australians, and they wanted to prove to their mother country that, you know, they were strong, they look at, you know, what we're able to do when we come to Australia, you know, our families, and build a better life, and then, you know, beat them at their own game. So, I could feel that, I could feel it the night before as well, when we just are about to train in the Croatian team at Finnish training, and we're getting off the bus, and I feel the players, like Jossips Koko is talking to Joey Dillitzer, that he grew up with in North Jolong, Siminitu, grew up with quite a few players, and went to the Institute of Sport with him, said itch that he went to the, I think it was the Institute of Sport with a few of them as well, and grew up with quite a few of the players. So, there was sort of friends playing against friends, but will enemies the next night, and until after the game when, you know, you felt that they were happy for us just as much as if their country went through, not only the players, but I think the supporters as well. And you went through really similar emotions to those Croatian boys only a few nights later, when the Sockaroos, of course, took on Italy in the round of 16. Yeah, and that's when I really felt what they would have gone through, because, you know, especially going to the stadium, I remember being on the bus and sitting there, and you're focused, and you're trying to picture, you know, what you have to do during the game, but the emotions were definitely there. I started to think about my grandfather, who went to Australia in the 50s, four years before his family could actually end up joining him to create a better life for his family. And I started getting tears in my eyes, that how proud he would have been of what we were able to achieve, even what we're doing and facing, you know, the Italians and he wasn't alive. I've joined the World Cup, obviously my dad, my mum, who also come from Italian background. Their emotions would have been exactly the same, how proud they would have been not only of myself, but the family that had come to Australia to have a better life. In that period, I started to think what it must have felt like for the Croatian boys when they played against Croatia. Andrew, were you both a diverse academic background, and you're currently the director, economic development and international at the city of Melbourne, where you're in charge of international education and relationships. Now, before I touch on your book, where did you watch the Australia Croatia game? You of course weren't a part of it. No, I wasn't a part of it, and like a good number of Australians at the time, I think I jumped on the soccer is bandwagon during that World Cup campaign. Watching it with my mates, but for that particular game, I think I remember getting up really early and watching it from my lounge room from my house in Brunswick, and it was for someone who grows up with a different football code, getting on board an experience like that during that campaign, who's actually quite memorable, and actually is a good way of changing, almost changing into my relationship with the game, I think, I think. That was a particularly important sort of moment in my life. Now, you're here because your book solved is referenced in John Ditalitz's chapters, the football belongs chapter specifically, the multicultural one. Now, in your book solved, your detailed how 10 countries solved 10 big problems, such as Denmark reaching 100% renewable electricity by 2030, and biotech epicenter Boston boasting the most innovative square mile on the planet, and amid some of the local hysteria around ethnicity and multiculturalism here, you cited Australia as a multicultural trailblazer acknowledging the role of sport and football in this. Yeah, I do think you have to step back and have a look at how successful we've been when you when you look at some of the figures, it's incredible. A third of us were born overseas, half of us have got at least one overseas born parent, and yet, and those figures are double the comparable figures in the United States, or the UK, or countries such as that. There's no other country in the developed world that comes close, and yet 80% or more of Australians think that multiculturalism is made Australia a better place to be, and it's been an incredible success story. When you look at some of the key metrics, I mean, children of migrants go on to achieve better results at school than children of Australian born parents. That's really rare around the world. Most in most countries, children of migrants do much worse than children of native born, but in Australia, it's actually the other way around. Almost on every measure, we're doing really, really well. John L. Oisi, what were your school marks like? Yeah, I was the exception for that rule. I can say my door is a door better, and I was born in Australia, but I was born overseas. That's the only difference. John, did I let you add some very good marks if I'm not mistaken, ducks of your school, and went on to study law, but. I may have been opposed to my high school marks online at the appropriate time for those wishing to assist those. Absolutely. Now, in reference to the chapters and your references to solved, I guess when you read Andrew's book, when did it occur to you that this was part of the Australian football narrative? Yeah, I had been thinking about, what football meant to me, but what it meant in the broader context to Australia, and in reading solved, it really occurred to me that what football did was allow Australia to become the wonderful nation that it is. And what Andrew talks about in his book is that of all the nations in all the world, we're the ones that have mastered multiculturalism, which is an incredibly powerful prize as it were. I mean, immigration is fundamental to the growth of every single society, economically, culturally, immigration is inevitable. And for us to be the nation that's been able to solve the growing pains that comes with that is a wonderful badge of honor to be wearing. And then when, you know, I looked at this through a football incident and thought, well, our entire immigrant experience for me was spent in our football clubs. And I relayed that to my personal story, where my grandfather, my mum's dad, my dad came later, but my mum's dad moved to Australia in the 1950s. And I talk about this in the chapter, he found a lot of barriers to assimilation. It was a very alien country, you know, as I said, there's no black coffees and, you know, little whiskies. You're drinking stout beer and, you know, Vegemite. So it's a totally alien culture. And what allowed him to actually build some structure in his life was a football club. That was something he was comfortable with. It's something his life-minded friends were interested in and they built a football club. And that allowed him to navigate what was an alien experience for him. Now, the next question for me was in how important was the, were these football clubs to then helping Australia become the sort of multicultural success that Andrew spoke about. Mr Speaker, Australia is the most successful multicultural society in the world. Because it's pretty clear, I think it's beyond debate that multiculturalism in Australia has worked. And we'll continue to work, provided we have this same sort of approach to what is we're doing. Yeah, and I think one of the things that makes Australian multiculturalism so successful is how well we do with settlement services. New migrants, when they arrive, are wrapped around, have a wrapped around them as a whole bunch of support services that help them find accommodation, navigate things like signing up for bills and utilities and working out where to get, where to buy the food that they're familiar with and comfortable with. But before the 1970s, Australia didn't really have those support services. You know, they didn't really exist in a really structured institutional way. And I think the local football club performed many of those services. They performed that role. It almost where the football club was the settlement service in a way, where people could develop their English skills, where they could become accustomed to Australian cultural norms, where they could expand their social networks, make the contacts that they needed to enable them to get housing or employment. And more basically, just to sort of minimise their home sickness. And I think that put a really important role, I think. Yeah, and the thing about football is football is a cooperative venture. So you come together with 20 other teams or 12 teams or 50 teams to form a league competition and league structure. So you're actually engaging with all these other communities in an effectively safe space. So if you're a Croatian community or a Greek community or a British community, you're engaging with these people in a shared experience once a week. So it builds an empathy and understanding between these different cultures. And you know, when you fast forward to that game in 2006, it was really, it just really dawned upon me this would come for circle. And Andrew talks about this really effectively in his book is this, it's a two way discussion. So it's not just the Aussies looking after the incoming migrants. It's the incoming migrants and giving back to the mother country. And I couldn't think of a more compelling snapshot of that that night in Stuttgart, where you had Australia had given a home to all these migrants who would come into Australia. And it's not just the southern Europeans, whether it's John or Scoco or Viduka. It's Tim Cale. Tim Cale's mother's Pacific Islander. And the immigration policies, Andrew, you can probably correct me. The immigration policies around Pacific Islanders was incredibly draconian for many years. The white Australia policy put paid to extending full rights to Pacific Island communities and was only as we broke down those white Australia barriers. That allowed the Pacific Islanders to become integrated into our community. So here we had the success of multiculturalism, allowing these young kids to fulfill their dreams. And in turn, they went out there and represented a country wonderfully and gave back to the crowd there who, as you know, was the largest single exodus of Australians from Australia since World War II. So there's this huge given tax, Andrew, probably may have stolen some of your thunder in that regard. But can you talk a bit about that two way, the importance of that two way conversation? Well, you know, when you think about what is Australian multiculturalism, it's this notion that people come from all around the world, they bring their cultures with them, that we basically are comfortable with people bringing all sorts of different cultures, as long as they sign up to a few basic norms, like commitments to the law and in basic things like that. But we sort of broadly expect that in time, people will gradually fit into the Australian way of life. But the flipside is that Australian way of life is not fixed in stone. It actually changes over time. The contribution of migrants to Australia means that Australia changes. So instead of T being the most popular drink in, hot drink in Australia, now it's now it's coffee instead of beer being [BLANK_AUDIO] being the most popular alcoholic drink. Now it's wine and the European migrants contributed to that and just slowly, imperceptibly, over time, the contribution of migrants changes what it means to be Australia. And I think the role of sport plays into that really nicely. And I think the examples you give really tell us, tell us a similar story about what does it mean to be Australian? And I think all of the Australians in the audience watching that game would have got a sense of the changing face of Australia, the changing meaning of being Australian. And to quote an excerpt from the chapter for Australia of the 14 plays who took the field that evening, 11 had parents who were immigrants who had arrived in the years following World War II, four of whom had direct links back to Croatia. Of the broader 23 plays in the Socaru squad, 18 had at least one parent born outside of Australia and seven had links back to Croatia within their lineage. John Aloesia wanted to delve into your family. Italian roots, the Aloesia is migrated to South Australia. Tell us about their story of assimilation. Yeah, my dad, he's got three brothers and one sister and two actually integrate as quick as possible. They found sport was a good way. So he was, my old man was a massive cricket fan and he loved playing cricket. I don't think he played cricket in Italy. No, she'll feel chilled in Italy. No, there was no, she'll feel chilled. I think that the close thing that I heard. Joe Skidiri. Joe Skidiri was a good fast baller, but he was South Australia. He's born and bred. And so what they all played cricket and there was a way of them fitting in with their schoolmates and with people in their community. And the three brothers played AFL. My dad was the only one that actually played football. And he straight away thought, well, you know, he wanted to feel comfortable in his surrounding. So he went to Adelaide Juventus, then called Adelaide City. And that was an Italian club. And so that's how we ended up, but that ended up being our second home. And we just found it so comfortable that, you know, a lot of our teammates and the people within the club were of similar backgrounds and similar upbringing. But yeah, that was a way of them. I think integrating very quickly was actually finding sport was the best way. And they love their sport. And they still do love their sport. So you could have just as easily been a fast baller or a batsman and all rounder for that matter for Australia. I'm not me so much. I don't think, I think my brother Ross was a better cricketer than what I was. I could play. I could play a little bit and I enjoyed it. But I wasn't as good as Rosswee's to have our, you know, backyard cricket games, our driveway cricket games, our street cricket games with the rest of the neighbourhood. And Ross was a standout for sure. So if it was anyone that was going to play for Australia would have been him. But look, there was definitely a sport I loved in the summer and football was our winter sport. And how did your family feel around that time, John? Because that was a real turning point as John did let's are touches on in these chapters. But that was a really seminal moment for Australian football and particularly the Socarus. And it certainly changed your your life and your families. It did. Look, we growing up in Adelaide, you know, our dream was not only to play, you know, for the Socarus playing a World Cup play football at a professional level, which my dad never thought could happen to us. He thought that playing the local league NPO stand, it was, you know, the level that would probably get to and he would be happy with that. But it was about, you know, sport and football in general is becoming main in mainstream media. And we saw that with cricket. We saw with Aussie rules in Adelaide and, you know, league in New South Wales and Queensland. But, you know, football was never in mainstream media. If you follow the NSL back then, you sort of part of a group that JD's got a good word for that group. What do you call them JD? A secret society. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it was, it was like that there was only a few of us. And there was only, you know, a handful that would actually follow the NSL and follow football in our country. Now, when we qualified for the World Cup, I played before I played nine years for the Socarus and I could walk down the street probably any time of the day and not one person would recognise me. After the World Cup and after the Uruguay moment, if I walk down the street, even now, that's 15 years later, I'll get either a stop, look that, or someone's screened out, "I'll always see." Which sometimes it's a bit embarrassing. Did I take the shirt off? Well, I wish that. Oh, no, they don't. It's, it's something that we, you know, we dreamt about as kids that we could actually, you know, help the game grow, being involved in the game that we love that that would be in mainstream media. Little did we know that, you know, just making that World Cup, that would end up giving it a big kick. But coming back now, there's, it's starting to go into that secret society again with the A league, not many people follow it. So, you know, I don't know the reasons why, but there must be some reason behind that. I want to take us back to Gottlieb Daimler Stadium that night. I'm there Dave, so was I. Yeah, I'm just feeling it right now. I was under pretty strict deadline pressure at that stage. So, probably wasn't soaking up the emotion as much as, as much as you guys. But the Socarus had advanced to the knockout phase for the first time and FIFA blessed Soul Pumped some high-voltage, Aussie classics through the speakers. John Alley said it was a peak period for post-game celebrations after you boys partied with John Travolta in the chain groom seven months earlier. But I want to start with you, John Ditalitzer. Now, you've managed to unpack these distinctly Australian themes against the backdrop of football games, and that was replicated in a musical sense at night. I can, again, I still remember it like it's yesterday. And John, you probably, John Alley see, you know, doubt have a recollection of walking back out of that tunnel and hearing Acadaca blasting through that stadium. And I still remember Highway to Hell and High Voltage back to back. And it was a transcendent moment. It was incredible. Now, when you look back, now this is a moment of look back and reflect. This didn't occur to me at the time. But you have this situation where you have this group of migrant children. You know, the ones we've discussed earlier that were embraced by this nation that were given, were stood on the shoulders of a successful multicultural policy from the Whitlam government in the 70s and became these incredible Australian ambassadors. So that on the world stage, the world is watching these 11, 14, 23 players do their stuff. And they're all out on the running track that's around the Stuttgart stadium, head banging to Acadaca. Okay, so this is seminal experience. Now, I unpacked that a little bit further because you look at ACDC, okay? The same. Effectively, Aussie migrant kids who went and conquered the world and side by side were celebrating with Acadaca and the soccer ruse on that pitch. And if you look back though, MGO even further, is the architect of Acadaca wasn't necessarily Angus Young or Malcolm Young. It was their brother George. Now, George, you may or may not know, was the brains behind Australia's first ever band to break in England, called the Easy Beats, okay? So the Easy Beats sang Friday on my mind and with the biggest band of the 60s in Australia. Can we have a rendition of that? No. Any of you? No. And so Friday on my mind is huge here. Easy Beats become the biggest thing in Australia. George learns the music industry through that and goes, aha, I've got a couple of talented brothers back at home. I'm going to turn them into Acadaca, okay? So do you know how we form the Easy Beats at Villawood Migrant Center? He met his bandmates there. Another British kid on a couple of Dutch kids. Didn't have anything in common sitting around in a migrant camp forming the heart that would become the Easy Beats and in term ACDC. Harry Vander was the Dutch kid. Yeah, Harry Vander. So they became the best songwriting duo in Australian history arguably. So you have this you can trace back the roots of some of these Sockeroos back to Bologna-Gillar Migrant Center in the 50s and all these migrants coming to the country and they had this alchemy in these centers that created these wonderful sports people and it created these wonderful musicians. So we had this most unique Australian moment ever. The Sockeroos in Germany, headbanding to Acadaca, that had a genesis in these migrant hostels which is just incredible and I think if we could actually you know bottle some of that for today, I think we'd see how far more successful we could be as a nation if we actually adopted the same approach we did then to our multicultural policy and you know Andrew speaks to how successful we've been yet we're almost moving away from that now Andrew. Yeah and I guess that does raise the question is what is the games relationship with the new waves of migrants? Where are the games supports for the South Sudanese community or other or. other communities in a new migrant cohorts. I mean, the relationship of the game is very different now, I suspect, to what it was in the post-war context. You get any thoughts on that? Yeah, absolutely. And that's something we're still grappling with. It's almost like we got to the end of a cycle with that World Cup success. And we couldn't reinvent the game to accommodate the new wave of migrants. And I think a part of that again is trying to build a paradigm that's not uniquely Australian. You know, we're consistently trying to adopt models from outside the country into how you develop talent. We're consistently trying to see how the game failed us things, how the NRL does things, how tennis does things, how the Dutch do things. We've got to move away from that. And that part of the impetus of doing this book was we're starting to find a distinctly Australian voice to this game. And once we find that, we can apply it to all the different areas of our sport. Yeah, why don't the South Sudan? Yeah, we're seeing some wonderful players now emerging from that community, which is great. Into the national team. Which is great. You know, so how have we done enough though? That's the question. But, you know, A-War and Ruan and all these wonderful players from that part of the world. A-Warmer, Bill, Thomas Steng. Yeah, Thomas Steng. Thomas Steng. Doing great things. So, are we doing that as well as we can though? And that's the question. We, as football, we should have a fundamental role in making sure Australia culturally, not just our football teams, but Australia as a society can actually embrace these communities and help them have the same success that the Croatian community, the Italian community, the Greek community, and the others enjoy it. John, back to you. Back to Stuttgart, back to Akadaka. Your memories of that. Yeah, well, it was quite lucky actually, because we finished the game, you know, obviously celebrated probably for about two minutes on the field. And we were back in the changing room going, how good was that? You know, what a game and just, you know, everyone was just excited and they started to get undressed, ready to go on the show. And someone came in and said, by the way, the crowd hasn't left and they're playing Akadaka outside. Go and experience it. So I can't remember who the coach was. I don't even know if it was Gust, that I doubt it was Gust, but he wasn't thinking. Was Gust hitting an Akadaka fan? Yeah, I don't know, but you know what? Gust actually did end up saying, come on boys, go out there and enjoy what you just achieved. And that was the best thing that could have happened to us. That was one of the highlights of the World Cup. We had many highlights, you know, during the games and even just, you know, being able to have a day in Stuttgart with our family, because that's where our family were staying when we had a day off. But after that game against Croatia, to walk outside and hear the music pumping, Akadaka, the songs that we all know and grew up with. And also to see that the Croatian fans behind the goals that were giving it to us a little bit during the game. I remember warming up just in front of them during the game. And I was a little bit on edge because how loud they were and how I wouldn't say aggressive. It was just one of those feelings that you go, oh, this would get a little bit nasty if we win this game. But after the game, they gave us a round of applause and cheered us as if we were part of their nation. And that felt good. And then to walk even more around it and see all the green and gold still there and singing along with us. That was definitely a highlight of not only the World Cup, but our careers. John and I both know Croatian fans don't take losses too well. So I thought that was almost the ultimate compliment for the Soccerers. A lot of Croatian fans were, they weren't angry that their team lost. They almost accepted that, well, it was a draw, but they almost accepted that the better team had advanced. Yeah, look, I hate to bring down the intellectual tenor of this podcast, but it did remind me somewhat of Rocky IV when the Russian career actually turned around 12 onwards. They threw their substantial weight behind one Rocky Bobo and Ivan Drago was left to meet the last fans himself. But it was. It was very much like that, John. We could see it. As soon as the final whistle went, you could set the Croatian fans were there to celebrate alongside us. And maybe that was part of that synergy we're talking about. They recognized the fact that as a nation, Croatia had this strong bond to the Australian people and we're happy for us. And that's the thing. There were so many twists and turns and sliding doors moments leading into that game that were encapsulated in that game. I mean, as you allude to in the chapters, John, Mark Varduka playing against Yossip Shimonic, both born and bred in Australia, both playing for the Melbourne Knights, had things of panda differently. Mark Varduka could have been wearing a Croatian shirt and Joe Shimonic. For all intents and purposes, they had identical lives and identical careers. Yet one's essential defender for Croatia and one's a striker for Australia. Like they, they, they, it's the absolute, I don't know if it's full circles. They're right analogy, but it's incredible that their lives could have led them to that point. So on that day, they were polar opposites. Yet their lives mirrored one another. So intimately. Extraordinary to look at the impact of that evening, yet we touched on the post-game celebrations inside the stadium. It's almost what you pay in terms of the admission fee, that post-game party. And as you allude to the biggest Australian Exeter since World War II. And then 16,000 kilometres away in Australia, almost five million people watching. There was, I was watching the videos in the last few days and got goosebumps because I was in Germany. I never actually saw it. You saw people dancing on the streets and just extraordinary scenes that John Eloisey, when did you guys realise that you had made such a big impact? I would realise when we got back to the hotel because it looked social media wasn't massive back then. We didn't really get anything on our phones, but there was a computer that everyone would jump on. That was down in the foyer of our hotel. And one of the boys went on to check to see what was happening on the news back in Australia. And saw that the amount of people dancing on the street, Federation Square going off and just people having fun. We realised then that actually this could unite a country. We'd never seen, we'd seen it in Europe, in South America, in part of Asia, but we'd never seen something so similar to that in Australia. And we realised after that game, especially that we just, we hit home that football could be a game that unites the whole of Australia. And that definitely was during that period. And we felt that. Andrew, you were the only, one of us that was based back here at the time we had the Olympic Games six years earlier based in Sydney. Obviously there were a few events around Australia, but it's quite unique to football isn't it, where it's got a big following across Australia, where, for instance, Aussie rules, popular in the southern states, rugby league, and union in the northern states, cricket I guess is another truly national sport, but take us back to, to then you alluded to it earlier, but the impact of that World Cup and the soccer rules results on this city, this country. Yeah. Back then, people who didn't normally follow soccer or people who didn't normally engage with the game any great way got on board during that World Cup campaign paid attention. Everyone was watching the game with their mates, talking about soccer as they've been following their whole life when they picked it up five minutes before. I think I was one of those people. And it was really quite a, quite a moment. We all felt it. We all felt it. We all were all willing. The soccer is over the line and sharing in the triumphs and the tragedies of that campaign. And it was something quite memorable I think. I'll throw it back to you Andrew. You've done some significant research on the role of sport and particularly football in supporting multiculturalism, which you've touched on, but just want to delve a little bit deeper into the role of football and perhaps moving forward. How do you think football can continue to shape Australia? Yeah, it's interesting. One of the things about Australian multiculturalism that's really unique compared to what in other countries is that we've got migrants from such a diverse range of backgrounds and countries. Migration to Australia isn't dominated by a single group, by a single language group. You can go to a school in Danny Nong and there'll be 50, 60 different languages spoken amongst the students in the school. There'll be 200 different ethnic groups participating in the local community. And I think that's really, really strong. I think that points also to the future direction really for a game like football. I mean, It needs to be able to embrace and encompass the full breadth and diversity of Australian multiculturalism, and which is evolving and changing. The face of migration in Australia, as we alluded to earlier, is different from we had the sort of post-war, southern and eastern European migration in the 50s through to Vietnamese migration in the 70s, and now increasingly we've seen migration from Afghanistan and Africa and Sri Lanka, and a whole bunch of other communities as well. And I think the challenge is for us, for a sport like football, is to adapt and change with that migrant cohort. You're quite involved in COVID policy at the moment, couldn't that change the course of Australia's immigration story? It's absolutely changing. And with the borders shut, we've seen migration basically just grind to a hold. Up until March, we were saying 200,000 people a year come to this country in terms of overseas migration and now it's gone down to zero. So it'll make a huge, huge dent. It's something that I'm not sure we really know how it's going to impact, but it was certainly a massive, massive shift. Now that may precipitate a reset to how we integrate cultures, so if we've had a period of time without this steady flow of incoming migrants, it may well shift the public sentiment around the reintroduction of large numbers of migrants. Now we look at it objectively, and in the absence of those migrants, economy can't grow, we can't have the kaleidoscope of beauty that we're having in this country, but there are significant forces who rail against multiculturalism in the tabloid press, for example. So the equilibrium that we'd established over 50 or 60 years through the success of our society could be threatened. So it'll be incredibly important to see our institutions or be it sport, be it football specifically, are able to help maintain the success that we've had over generations. And I think there's one really important point that Andrew raises there is there's always been different faces of migration, and that's why Australian football, to put it overlaid into a football context, it's why Australian football needs to treat itself as a bespoke product. We cannot import other methodologies, other models of either competition or play development or administration where unique. Now we've got the most arguably the most varied source of migrants. We've got a strong stench of British colonialism still hanging around our neck. We're not a major. We're not the mainstream favourite sport. We don't get the government funding. So we are incredibly unique, and what we need to do is actually treat ourselves as being unique and build our football policy around that. To finish up on the game itself in Stuttgart, which of course this chapter is about now. Your brother, Joey Ditalitzer, was part of the Croatian national team squad, born and bred in Australia, actually represented Australia's youth national teams, was actually on standby for the soccer rules for the 2003 friendly against England. I actually remember delivering his shirt, I think it was number 23. I'll war that at the game. There we go. Without giving away too much, we want people to read the chapter and strongly recommend they do read the chapter and all the chapters for that matter, but there's a great little anecdote about your brother. He didn't start in the game, but boy, oh boy, was he busy throughout and afterwards. Yeah, well, he got the matchball and that was one of his objectives was to get the matchball from the game. After the final whistle, he made a b-line for the referees room. We all know, Graham Poll had a nightmare, so he was at the end. Well, this multiculturalism absolutely baffled Graham Poll, didn't it? He gave you a six-chiminic, three yellow cards. He did know. One was for when he played for Australia, and one was when he played for Croatia. So he made a b-line. He wanted that matchball, because he knew it was a famous, he knew it was going to be a famous match and I tell the story of his journey from the change room to that referees room. And it was his whole life in 30 seconds. It was bumping into your sipscoCo, his childhood friend. It was bumping into Jason Chalena, not only a childhood friend who he met at North Jolong through his dad, Branco, but his teammate at Iaxe, who went on that massive journey together. He bumped into Brasiano, Grala, Archie, all guys that he'd grown up with through the Talon ID programs and played against, in Australia, we're heading off overseas. So this game captured his life in a moment and the walk from the dressing room to the referees room did the same thing and the reason he wanted that matchball was so he could give it to my grandfather and my grandfather who left Croatia, come to Australia, built a football club, built a life for himself and he thought that would be the perfect souvenir to capture his life. And fortunately before my grandfather died, my brother was able to give him that matchball and say thank you for what you did. So, yeah, it was an incredible, yeah, for me, it's like it's a very personal story for me. But equally, I think it's a powerful story for the nation to demonstrate why, how football helped Australia become the wonderful multicultural country that it became. And it wasn't, you know, and that shouldn't be conflated with saying that multiculturalism invented football, it didn't, football existed in this country for seven or eight years before the Southern Europeans in particular came. And for those who haven't listened to it, I recommend you listen to the first podcast where we touched on that extensively with yourself Andy Harper and Tracy Holmes. So it existed. What football did was help fuse Australia into the wonderful country became by giving these immigrant communities, you know, Andrew describes it really well. The settlement services that now we run through a bureaucracy, we run through these, not for profit community organization. So it's, it's football helped this nation become what it is today, yeah, we don't sell it right there. And I've got a vision of your families, I know there was a lot of articles as well leading into that world cup to Skokos and the Ditalitsas back in Bellpark, Bellpost Hill, you know, wearing their red and white kits or their Sokaru's kits depending on which family they'll part of. Back to you, John Allowecio, I just wanted to get you to reflect on those chaotic scenes at the end of the game and you actually scored a goal, which I don't understand why it didn't stand. Yeah, never. And there was that much happening in a game that no one has ever really elaborated on it. Well, the whole of the last probably 20 minutes was chaotic. Big time. I think when Guss made those changes and brought myself Josh Kennedy on, and I think it was Preciano. Yeah. I'm pretty sure Preciano didn't start. I remember him being on when we scored the goal. Preciano. Towards Kennedy. Yeah. My drop of cure. Harry Gull has died. Australia's goal, the boy, has come up with a goal and goal. And we're back tied at 2-2. Preciano's delivery. I think it was Allowecio who might have got the flick on. Born touch. And Harry Gull fairly latched the ball home for a close rate. It was sort of like that there were two parts to our team. You know, there was attack and defense. We just had no midfield. And it was just it was so open and you know, and that's how we ended up scoring the goal. We had about five or six players, attacking players in the box when Preciano played that ball in, I got a flick on and Harry put it away. He wasn't at the side. Yeah, it was offside. They saw that I touched the ball. If they are, it's just that. I know. He would have lost the game. I wouldn't be talking about this now. I would not be doing that. Even after that, there was only like God, I can't remember how long to go, but it was just mayhem. There was things going on, the three yellow cards and the red card. And you know, it was, we had a long throw in. Josh Kennedy gets a flick on. And as I'm actually I've connected the ball and as it's traveling to the back of the net, the referee blows. And I'm like, oh, did he blow whistle for Josh Kennedy giving away a foul? And so I looked at him and it was like, that's the end of the game. And I went up to him, like, why did you blow the whistle for? I said, I just scored the ball, actually hit the back of the net as you still blow on the whistle. And he said, I don't worry, John, you're gone through anyway. And I'm like, we would have won the game three, two, I would have had another goal would have worked up. I was gutted. It was about 30 seconds that I started to think, okay, we're through and then I started to celebrate. But when I look back, I'm thinking, what he did that game, what a nightmare of a game that he had. And I'm glad he retired straight up. He's probably a key goal. I mean, you would have had 28 Sockaroos goals. You could have been competing for the FIFA World Cup gold and boot, but I actually interviewed Rainpole a couple of years later and he still didn't know what had happened. He was just completely rattled by the occasion. We're in stoppage time. Wanted to obviously wrap things up, Andrew, just starting with you. Can we get some closing remarks? Yeah. Well, Australia is a fantastic multicultural country and N Football has been a massive part of that. story and I think the challenge and the opportunity now is for football to be a part of that story as part of our multicultural future as well as its past. Fantastic. John LLWC, can we replicate those scenes from 2006 on and off the field? That's a big question Dave. I hope we can. But for us to do that, we actually need to not only have players playing at the highest level in Europe and that's playing either Premier League or LaLiga or Seria, like we did back then. So then because now you can watch those leagues weekly on anything with social media how it is and all the platforms and then the television stations you've got now, especially Optus Sport that show the Premier League week in week out. Great platform. That is a great platform. And then not only qualifying for World Cups because everyone's accepted that we're going to qualify every four years. Even though it's not easy and it's a massive achievement, people want more and to replicate that we need to get through the group stages and go even further. So then we're creating history and I think that's when we'll see that we are changing people's opinion that we're not just a sport that yes, it's well liked here in Australia but it's not the number one sport. Until then I don't know if we are going to replicate that. John Ditalitzer as the author of these chapters running on the Optus Sport platform. So what are your closing remarks? I do feel as if I've said enough throughout this podcast but I'll just add, I suppose as an inno to this is, you know, we should be so proud as a code as to what we've contributed to the Australian story and multiculturalism sits at the anchor of our success and that wouldn't have been possible without the role of our many football clubs. We should draw such pride from that and we should wear that as a badge of honor rather than trying to, you know, contort ourselves into all these different positions and roles to meet some mythical version of what it means to be Australia because as Andrew said, Australia is so varied, it's so different. Let's accept it, let's be proud of it, let's embrace it, let's own it and I don't think we have. So hopefully moving forward we can. Andrew, we are John Alloesey. Thank you very much for joining us on this special football belongs podcast series for Optus Sport. We'll be back again very soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]