Australia National Football Team

The Australia National Football Team is known to be the national football team of Australia. Officially nicknamed as “the Socceroos”, this team is under the direct control of the Football Federation Australia, initially known as FFA. This is a member of the Asian Football Confederations. The coach of this team is Pim Verbeek, with most caps being taken by Alex Tobin with 87 and Damian Mori taking the top scorer honor of 29 goals. The ranking of this team as per FIFA is 27.

This team has achieved the Oceania Football Confederation champion for four times and has been active team at almost 3 World Cup finals matches held in 1974, 2006 and 2010. This team is known to be the strongest teams and also one of the strongest countries in Asia, at present, ranked at 20th place in the world as per FIFA. It was in 2006 when the team made it to the 16th position in the World Cup in Germany but got knocked out due to controversial issues by their rival team champions, the Italy football national team. What’s more, the Aussies team blighted again in 2010 World cup finals campaign with controversial and incorrect refereeing decisions. This lead to the elimination of the team in the group stages in spite of a 2-1 victory over Serbian team and a draw against Ghana.

For the Australian team, it was a great disappointment too, though they will soon embark from this situation and are preparing for the Asian Cup to be held early 2011 and the World Cup qualification to be held in 2014.

The first game of this team was in 1922 in Auckland, New Zealand, where the team lost to New Zealand. Some of the total men squad of the present Australian National Football team includes James Holland, Josh Kennedy, Dario Vidosic, David Carney, Mile Jedinak, Carl Valeri, Nikita Rukavytsya, Rhys Williams, Shane Lowry, Adam Federici, Michael Beauchamp, Richard Garcia, Brett Holman and many others.

=== Major Achievements ===

Their major achievement was in 2001, whilst playing in Coffs Harbor in Australia. They won by 3-1 against American Samoa. Till date, this team has made 3 appearances in the World Cup and their first appearances were in 1974. They made one appearances at the AFC Asian Cup in 2007, with the best results being at the quarter finals.

This team made 6 appearances at the OFC Nations Cup, their first match being in 1980 and the best result being with the Champions cup received in 1980, 1996, 2000 and in 2004. Subsequently, the team played in the Confederations Cup thrice, the first being in 1997. Their best result was as a runner up in 1997. They have also made 3 World cup appearences with their best result in 2006 when they made the round of 16 and then were knocked out by Italy 1-0 in a close match Italy then proceeded throught to the final beating France.