One of the least neglected protocols of elite sport is the obligation of the national coach to answer the question ‘What can you take from this defeat?’ And nobody could accuse Socceroo head coach Tony Popovic’s of falling short in his final Fifa World Cup post-match interview, the bottom line of which was that he (and by extension we) couldn’t be prouder of the 26 young Aussies in his charge. It is perhaps to the credit of the Australian journalists at that press conference that none of them pointed out the fault-line in Popovic’s reasoning: that if the Socceroos had beaten Egypt and progressed to the Round of 16, he (and by extension we) would certainly feel prouder of them. Neither did anyone put it to Mr Popovic that if there was one thing which he, personally, might take from this particular defeat it is that its not a great idea to ask the youngest, least experienced member of the squad to take critically important penalties. Indeed, when someone had the temerity to even raise the subject of penalties, Mr Popovic assumed a tone of righteous indignation; as if a post-match press conference was neither the time nor the place to ask what just went wrong, and who might be held accountable. And that anybody who wanted to know such things showed a lack of taste. It’s one thing to expect the players to put themselves through the meat grinder for 120+ minutes and be found wanting, seemed to be the message, it’s quite another to expect the bloke whose orders they were carrying out to face any kind of music. The loyal silence of the Aussie journos bespoke sympathy if not concurrence, and many of the articles and reports they subsequently filed echoed Mr Popovic’s parting aperçu; which was that getting as far as these 26 young Aussies got in 2026 is grounds for confidence that they will go further in 2030, 2034, etc. That if we as a nation just keep playing, watching and funding soccer – or football as we have learnt to call it – the way we have been playing, watching and funding it, it will inevitably become another of those fields of human endeavour in which we ‘punch above our weight’. There are only two things wrong with this line of thinking. The first is that doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome is a problem-solving technique developed by Homer Simpson. The second is that if it was true, the Socceroos 2026 World Cup performance would have topped or at least equalled their performances in previous years. But Australia has progressed beyond the group stage twice before, in 2006 and 2022. And it was the 2006 Socceroo squad, not the 2022 one, which came closest to reaching the quarter-finals. Indeed people who have watched the growth of football in Australia call that 2006 Socceroo squad representative of a ‘golden generation’, including, as it did, internationally recognised talent like Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Tim Cahill and yes, one Anthony Popovic. All of whom, in addition to putting on the green and gold every four years, played successive seasons for English Premier League clubs. At the time, this flowering of football talent in a country which historically had shown little interest in the round ball code was seen as proof of the benefits of what was then only starting to be called multiculturalism, many of the suburban clubs which nurtured it having been formed by immigrant communities who had watched ten minutes of rugby league, rugby union and AFL and said ‘No, grazie’ ‘Ne, hvala’ ‘Όχι, ευχαριστώ’ or ‘Не, благодарам’. Leaving aside the inconvenient truth that some of these clubs were a front for the sectarian enmities dividing their members’ countries of origin, champions of Australian soccer said it showed that multiculturalism is as good for Australian sport as it is for Australian cuisine. But events have proved otherwise. If there is any useful parallel for the demise of Australia’s football standards, it is the demise – over roughly the same period – of our standing as a rugby nation. When rugby league or rugby union was the only international winter sport choice faced by Australian schoolboys, the Wallabies rarely dropped out of the top three in world rankings. Now we struggle to stay in the top ten. Multiculturalism may have given us SBS and a bigger choice of takeaway food to eat while watching it. But as far as sport is concerned it may well be preventing us being very good at anything. Hey, we just lost to Bangladesh by five wickets! Perhaps the most constructive interpretation we can put on the Socceroos defeat in Dallas is to see it as fulcrum moment: an example of the decline of the diversity dividend.