The Totally Unbiased Guide to The World Cup

The World Cup begins next week, which means five weeks of sleep deprivation, late night delirium, and SEN briefly pausing discussions about whether James Hird should coach Essendon, to pretend they care about the World Game. (Although I do look forward to the usual SEN World Cup related call-in segments, like “Which AFL player would Nestory Irankunda be?” (To which the obvious answer is Nick Watson))

With Australia’s first game just over a week away (2.00pm, Sunday, 14th June. Cancel everything else in your calendar that day), here’s my totally unbiased guide to Australia’s chances at the World Cup.

Australia will win the World Cup.

Australia will win the World Cup. Nestory Irankunda will win the golden boot. Mat Ryan will win the Golden Glove. Anyone who tells you any thing different is UnAustralian, and must immediately hand back their green and gold afro wig.1

Too old, too cocky, too French and too terrible at penalties. England will go out on penalties like they always do, usually at the single most heartbreaking moment for English fans (ideally this happens against Australia, which would be even more heartbreaking for English fans and one of the greatest moments in Australia’s history). And then Australia will win the World Cup.

The first thing we have to do is get out of our group, which is Turkey, USA, Paraguay and Us. (Note: For the next five weeks we don’t say Australia, we say “We” or “Us”)

This is one of the most even groups in the World Cup. It’s not quite a Group of Death (not like 2014 when we got Spain, Chile, and Netherlands which was the deathliest group of death), but it’s a group of potential peril.

Turkey nearly didn’t qualify, and went through a double sudden death playoff, but are still ranked 5 places above us on the FIFA rankings. Paraguay were very bad, then fired their coach and suddenly got very good, going on an unbeaten run of 9 games including victories over Uruguay (gulp), Brazil (double gulp) and Argentina (triple gulp, full cold sweat, PTSD flashbacks of Messi scoring against us last time), so they are a genuine concern. But their coach’s nickname is “Lettuce”, and I refuse to feel threatened by a man who is nicknamed after a leafy green vegetable.

The real curly one is the USA. Usually it would be great to meet the USA in a group match at the World Cup, because they’re like a dodgy ex-boyfriend. They always promise they’re going to be better this time, and then they are much, much worse.

But this time, it’s more complicated. Firstly, the USA automatically qualified because they bribed FIFA to be a host nation are a host nation, meaning they didn’t do the proper qualification so it’s hard to tell how good they actually are. Secondly, many Americans call this team “The Golden Generation”™, but that isn’t always a good thing, because it puts a lot of pressure on the team to live up to it’s golden generation-ness. (Exhibit A: England, who have had about six Golden Generations™ in my life and still haven’t won in 60 years. If “squandering a Golden Generation™” was an industry, England would be the global superpower.)

Finally, we will play the USA in front of 69,000 home fans in Seattle, so there will be a red, white and blue sea of giant foam fingers, American flags, and a fuck load of fighter jets. Basically Australia will walk out onto a field like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV while Apollo Creed dances to living in America. But hopefully we get the same result as Ivan Drago (without the manslaughter). There is also the genuine concern that if Australia is winning with a few minutes to go, that Trump will go full Bane in the Dark Knight Rises and destroy the stadium.2

It used to be so simple. The top two teams from every group went through. The World Cup started with 32 teams, which went to 16, then 8, then 4, then 2. It was extremely easy to understand, even for someone like me, who did “Vegie Maths”™ in Year 12 (the worst maths where they stuck all the kids who struggled to even turn on a calculator. It wasn’t the official name for the subject, but it was the term everyone called it, even the teacher that taught the actual subject).

But this year FIFA decided to have 48 teams to make shit tons more money make it a truly global celebration. So now we start with 48 teams and 32 go through to the next round, meaning the top two teams in each group go through, along with the 8 best third place teams.

The 8 best third place teams go through using a system based on points, goal difference, goals scored, FIFA rankings, and “Fair Play points” which is whoever has the less yellow and red cards (Although FIFA giving out points for “Fair Play”, is like an arsonist giving out a fire safety award).

If teams are somehow still tied after all that, they pick the team with the higher FIFA ranking. So they won’t have to do what they did in 1990 and draw team names out of two giant fishbowls like a chook raffle.3

Yes, look at the video. And if you know anything about FIFA that is one of the least dodgiest decisions they have ever made.

It also happened at the African Nations Cup in 2015, when Guinea and Mali were equal on everything after the group stage, so they met at a local hotel, and drew balls to see who would finish second and who would be eliminated. Guinea plucked the number two, finished second and went through. And Mali went to the hotel bar to get absolutely shitfaced and bitch about FIFA.

In 1954 Spain and Turkey were drawn after three qualifying games, so they got the son of a bloke who worked at the stadium, blindfolded him and asked him to pick between two bits of paper with the team’s names. He chose Turkey, and eliminated any possible chance that he would ever be able to visit Spain.

This also happened in my kids grade six football tournament last year, when one of the PE teachers put all the fixtures and results into an AI program, but after two matches the Wifi dropped out, the AI shat itself and all the results disappeared. My kid had to do rock paper scissors to see which school advanced and he won. I have never felt so proud of my own child winning a random game of chance in my life.

Of course, because we’re going to win the World Cup.

Nestory Irankunda. Australia has always had players that are “hard working”, “workman-like”, “disciplined”, all that boring stuff. Now we have Irankunda, a twenty year old who is explosive, outrageous and receives the ball 30 metres from goal, ignores all sensible options and unleashes a shot that is so powerful it will either burn a hole through the top corner of the net, or miss by 40 metres and take out a low flying aircraft. If most of the Australian team are reliable station wagons, Irankunda is a nitro burning funny car, tearing down the track with flames trailing behind.

We also have Mo Toure, a striker in the English Championship. Toure is a hotted up Ford Falcon XR6 - very exciting to watch, but still has a few reliability issues (Eg: missing an open goal in the friendly against Mexico).

We have Jackson Irvine who looks like he works at the bespoke bike repair shop down the road from us in Preston. He’s the one hipster you would feel okay about your sister dating. He also a very decent midfielder.

And finally we have Cristian Volpato, who could be our best attacking mid-fielder since Marco Bresciano and Tim Cahill. He’s the Alfa Romeo that has been hiding under a sheet in a far off garage, that no one has driven, but shit he looks good.

Christian Volpato is an Italian-Australian, who was overlooked by A-League teams as a teenager, so he buggered off to Italy and currently plays in Serie A for Sassuolo, where he’s been really good.

In 2022 Australia realised they had stuffed up really badly, asked him to join the World Cup team, but he said he would rather play for Italy. But then Italy didn’t make the World Cup in 2026 for the third time in a row (which is obvious karmic retribution for Fabio Grosso diving in the 2006 World Cup), so a few weeks ago, just before our squad was announced, Volpato switched to Australia, and was picked, despite never having played a game for us. It’s the equivalent of the the guy who rejects you, doesn’t contact you for four years, then out of the blue sends a text message at 2am, saying “You up?” And our coach, Tony Popovic, immediately texted back, in all caps, “YES. I’LL LEAVE THE DOOR UNLOCKED”

We are absolutely okay with this. Because he’s going to help us win the World Cup with goals like this.

I don’t accecpt the premise of your questions. We will win the World Cup.

We will win the World Cup.

We will win the World Cup.

If you would like to subscribe that would be great. I’ll do a bunch of stuff on the World Cup which will all be free. Or if you feel generous, subscribe for $8 a month, which is less than 2/3 of the price of a green and gold Afro Wig, and you’ll get all my comedy writing posts as well.

Finally, because my catholic guilt won;t allow me to end with asking for money… Here’s my favourite World Cup montage, which the BBC made for the 2022 World Cup montage, to the tune of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s, The Power of Love. If this doesn’t give you tingles, then you may need to seek medical assistance. The only negative is there’s only one Australian player featured.