It wasn’t circa 2005 with Aloisi’s dramatic penalty against Uruguay but it’ll more than do. Australia have put themselves into an almost unassaliable position to qualify for the FIFA World Cup.

The next missoin for the FFA? Getting good games for the national team between now and heading to Africa.

We have signed up to play the Republic of Ireland in Limerick in August and have Asian Cup qualifiers in November but have four more FIFA dates to fill in September and October.

The FFA have two things on their mind; firstly getting good sides that we’re not used to playing against (i.e. non-Asian) that we may come up against in the WC and secondly to get big enough sides to generate enough interest to get punters through the turnstiles.

There’s talk of the Dutch coming over which would be huge but who else should be on the hit list? The Sideline Eye has one name on the list: ENGLAND.

Australia playing England at home at football would surely get the media into a frenzy and sports lovers of all codes would have at least one eye on the contest.

Is this being pursued at all by the FFA? It definitely should be. The only other side that would turn the heads of non-soccer infidel here would be Brazil, which would be another huge coup for the FFA.

Both matches would tick both critera for the national body; its in the Socceroos interest to play against them and their style of football and it will get plenty of attention from the public.

Ok ok this might be pie in the sky stuff but its worth a shot.

Why would they want to come over here you say? Tell them Australian conditions are similar to South Africa and teams like England and the Netherlands should get out here to get used to it.

The next thing is getting decent World Cup warm up games in May 2010 which will be a lot tougher. Firstly, we won’t have a snow balls chance in hell in getting European teams over here because they’ll want to stay in the similar time zone that Africa shares with Western Europe.

Asian teams as I said above aren’t really in our interest to play against.

While South American sides could come over to base themselves in Australia where weather conditions are similar to South Africa and it is a more ’comfortable’ environment. It’s the long way to South Africa but you never know, its worth a shot! 

So get busy FFA, get us Joe Public some serious opposition. Let’s bring out some heavy weights and bring on the World Cup!