"great Australian football broadcaster Les Murray "???
Are you really serious about it?? Australian?? Football?? Sorry, but it doesn't fit in any way.

Excuse me?

ouch.. bittenca? brazilians aren't the only ones who know about football you know? les murray is actually quite a legend in australia, and covered football for about 20+ years I think...

sorry, SM. I didn't tell brazilians are the only ones who know about footbal. But it was very strange to hear that an Australian is a legend in the sport...I lived for six months and I had never heard about football...it's just rugby, cricket (gosh!!) and australian rules...anyway, I didn't pretend to be rude or being ofensive...

LINK

Ok, Mike. Les Murray is remarkable, especially for being an expert on...australian football!!! Sorry, but it's just funny to me. I spent a good time in Australia in 2002 and nobody cared about football. We only watched an add with Ronaldinho on TV. And there was a programm sunday morning on TV...nothing more!

2002? That's only one year after Australia beat Brazil at the Confederation's Cup. According to LINK Australian A-League had a higher average attendance (14,402) in 2006 than the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A (12,385). Australia also took the third largest contingent of travelling fans to the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

LMFAO :-) great stuff Mike

how many times are in the a-leauge, and how many in the brasileirao though?

Oh, what a great stuff, Mike!! Australian A-League has a great average attendance, but probably has the same level of Brazilian Fourth Division...Have you ever heard about Robinho, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Diego, Kaká, Adriano?? All of them played in Brazilian League before they went to Europe. What about australian players?? Viduka, Kewell...oh, come on!!

You also wrote about Confederation Cup. Sorry, man, but I just talk about World Cup Finals and Brazil's record of participation since 1930 - I'll not mention its trophys, ok?...hehehehe. Don't make me laugh!! Australia spent 32 years without being in a final round, even playing against Samoa FC and New Zealand. Hey, Mike, please, go play some rugby or cricket.

easy easy easy. you have to start somewhere right? in 2002 australia weren't on the map, but actually winning some games and getting into a world cup makes all the diff. bittenca - i was visiting australia during the world cup and everyone was going crazy over it.

You do realise Rugby isn't even the main sport in Australia. Oh and I will see you Brazilians crash and burn in South Africa, you wait and see... go live in the past with the so called 'jogo bonito' which died in 1982... Brazil = hypocrites of football, something you have in common with another nation... England.

are you that confident that australia will beat all the asian teams out for that spot??

i don't agree that joga bonito is dead, at the world cup everyone played badly, but in the friendly against argentine, and the game against chile the football was amazing to watch. we'll see some good stuff at the copa america i think.

My interest is Japanese football, so this is the last I'll say on the matter. Bittenca, your original point was that Australians aren't interested in football - but the facts speak for themselves. You implied that Australians aren't good at football, but Australian teams have beaten Brazilian teams at every level. Viduka, Emerton, Grella, Bresciano all played in Australia before moving to Europe.

And of course we played against New Zealand and Western Samoa, since Australia was a part of Oceania. After those qualifiers Australia lost playoffs to teams like Iran, Argentina and Uruguay, the latter of whom have beaten Brazil on several occasions. The original point, however, was that Les Murray is "a great Australian football broadcaster." He is, and has been recognised by FIFA as such.

The reason why Australia were not a force until recently was because we were stuck playing backwater teams like Western Samoa. We'd have two meaningful games every 4 years (The WCQ). How were we supposed to beat Argentina then? The real turnaround happened when we decided to move our home base to London.

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We started playing against good teams on a consistent basis. Now we're in Asia, I can see us progressing further than the second round of the WC (we were unlucky not to last time).

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Les Murray is an absolute legend and definitely knows his shit. Australian football owes it's life to Les, as well as Johnny Warren (I suggest you look him up too, Bittenca). If it wasn't for these two, football would be non-existent in this country.

Hey, Antonito...what planet do you come from?? Do I live in the past?? heheheh. Please, be serious...in the last four World Cups, Brazil won twice (1994 and 2002), was a runner-up playing against the home team (1998) and reached the quarter-finals (2006). Since 1966, I said 1966, Brazil has reached at least the eights in the World Cup finals...so, go play australian rules if you don't like rugby!

Ok, Mike. You won it. We started talking about Australian interest in football. I respect your point of view and I'm really convinced that australians are even more interested than they were in 2002. But Australian teams still sucks, man. Sorry, but this is really true. Once you beat Brazil in an official game, you can come to me and we'll start to think about australian in game's scenario.

Bu I'm still think we are far away from that. Maybe you could have a chance if Brazil had played a playoff in Oceania as Argentina and Uruguay did. In fact, Brazil played all the World Cup finals from the beginning if you don't know - I'm sure you do. About the players, no discussion too. I have never heard about Emerton, Grella, Bresciano. Nice to meet them! Les Murray, the legend, too..

Oh, I forget Johnny Warren...I'm sure he and Murray work hard to put Australia in this "high" level of competition we all are used to see in the last few years...in 18 WC finals and 2 appearances. It's amazing that you spent so much time out of great competitions having such a wonderful craps like Samoa, Fiji and Tonga. In Germany, Australia showed us a mix of rugby gaelic football on the picth...

and i think the main point was the commentators, who i think are above football and how football teams compare. there is no World Cup to compare commentators or tv presenters so how can you say? think about this, if you have two tv presenters who have single handedly help up football and managed to raise it's profile in a country that didn't care about football, then they must be quite special.

i can vouch for those two presenters bittenca, they are absolute legends and have held the game up for years (les murray no longer). it doesn't matter if the majority of australians aren't interested in football, we're talking about the percentage that are interested in football, and you can't argue that they are any less passionate or knowledgable about football than fans from anywhere else.

wow this comments character limit is really irritating! (don't worry, it's going to improve).

Personally, I think that football is tradition, history and passion. Brazil, Argentina, England, Italy, Germany and recently France and even Uruguai all deserve to be respected. Holland, Paraguay, México, Portugal (and maybe Spain) are among the tough ones, but without any trophys. Australia play at the same level os Arabia, Costa Rica, Iran, Poland, T. Tobago and Tunisia. That's it! The End.

Ok, SM, I quit it. I surrender myself to Les and Jhonny's importance. But I repeat: australian football sucks and it'll be like that for a long period. Bet what you want on it!

haha, i'm not taking any sides, but you have to start somewhere right? i am from india originally, and the majority of the people there are cricket fanatics. but to the people who love football and have always loved football, it doesn't make the sport any less important to them. slowly they are trying to build up football, and in 10-20 years you never know.

and look at china for example, football is easily the number 1 sport there, everybody loves it and breathes it, but in a nation with 1 billion people who all love football, they are still behind japan and south korea, and japan is a baseball country.

Bittenca = Brazilian Arrognace at it's best, out of all the supporters I meant at the World Cup the brazilans were the worst..

The fact you don't know who Kewell, Bresc or Cahill is, is actully a blight on your football knowledge than anything else.

As for Australian Football.. well we made the second round of the world cup didn't we, only to lose and dominate the eventual (cont)

champions. And I remember when we played Brazil at the WC it wasn't a walk over, in fact we held our own and could have easily scored if not for some dodgey ref calls and missed chances.
Anyway Australia is one of the top ranked teams in Asia and we are a good chance of winning the Asia Cup and qualifying for World Cups in the future. And if you don't know anything (cont)