The start of a new year always prompts reflections and meditations on the past 12 months, and if there's any sport in Australia that needs to do some soul-searching as it kicks off one of the most important years in its life, it's football.
Having ended 2022 on an impossibly sour note, the game now finds itself needing to make some decisions about where it wants to go as 2023 begins.
Here's a look back at the year that was, and the year that could be.
The highs
The Socceroos at the men's World Cup
If Lionel Messi's Argentina winning the 2022 World Cup was the fairytale end for the story's protagonist, the Socceroos' best-ever result in Qatar was the smaller, feel-good narrative arc for one of its loveable underdogs.
Coming into the World Cup off the back of a long and torturous COVID-hit qualifying campaign, which extended over 1000 days and 20 games (largely away from home), and having only escaped the group stage of the finals once before, expectations were all but absent for Australia in November.
Which made their performances all the more magical. After two heroic 1-0 wins over Tunisia and Denmark, the Socceroos made the round of 16 for just the second time in their history and set up a mighty clash with the ultimate winners.
They even pushed Argentina all the way to the final whistle, falling short 2-1 despite a few golden chances in the dying stages to equalise from Aziz Behich and the team's young breakout star, Garang Kuol.
For head coach Graham Arnold, whose job was far from secure only a few months before, Australia's results in Qatar were the ultimate vindication: not just of his squad selection, which included a host of young talent and players previously written off, but also of his mantra around the importance of belief, mateship, togetherness, and fight. Indeed, he was even selected by prestigious French football outlet L'Equipe as the coach of the tournament.
The scenes back in Australia of tens of thousands of fans gathered in public squares in the early hours to watch the Socceroos' exploits was a reminder of just how galvanising the national teams can be, and how much widespread support there is for football when there's a moment to bring its many fractured parts together.
ParaMatildas at inaugural CP Women's World Cup
The Socceroos weren't the only national team to compete at a World Cup this year, and they weren't the team to go furthest in one, either.
In May, Australia's first ever ParaMatildas team - which includes women and girls with cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury, and symptoms of stroke - took part in the inaugural Cerebral Palsy Women's World Cup in Salou, Spain.
Having finished as one of the two best-performing sides in the round-robin group stage, Australia met the world number one USA in the final, pushing them all the way to extra time in a thrilling 4-2 result which saw the ParaMatildas finish second.
In doing so, they not only became the first ever senior Australian national football team to qualify for a World Cup final, but also the first to win a silver medal at one.
Further, two of the team's stand-out players received individual accolades: Katelyn Smith, who scored a dazzling equaliser in the final, won the Golden Glove for the most outstanding goalkeeper, while co-captain Georgia Beikoff took out the Golden Boot with 13 goals across five games.
Aussie coaches flourishing overseas
It's not just Australia's best players who have been impressing overseas these days: its coaches have also been flying the flag and proving that our nation can produce some of its best minds, too.
Ange Postecoglou's rise from the A-League Men to Japan to now leading European giants Celtic is perhaps the greatest of the lot. In 2022, he became the first Australian coach to win the Scottish Premiership title in his first season at the helm, claiming the scalp of domestic rivals Rangers along the way, as well as becoming the first Aussie to coach a team in the men's Champions League (Joe Montemurro was the first Aussie to do it full-stop with Arsenal Women in 2019-20).
Speaking of Montemurro, the former Melbourne City coach joined Italian giants Juventus in 2021 and won the club their fifth consecutive Serie A title, establishing a record winning streak in Italian women's football and qualifying for the Champions League in the process. He also oversaw the club's first ever domestic treble after they'd won the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa in 2022.
Elsewhere in Europe, former Matilda Tanya Oxtoby landed a role as assistant coach under legendary Chelsea boss Emma Hayes, helping the club (and Sam Kerr!) win the Women's Super League and FA Cup double, while ex-Melbourne Victory boss Kevin Muscat led Yokohama F. Marinos (Postecoglou's old club) to the Japanese first division title.
The lows
Melbourne derby pitch invasion
Two weeks were all it took for the wave of hope and optimism generated by the Socceroos to come crashing down. In what has been described as "the darkest day for Australian football", roughly 150 Melbourne Victory fans stormed the field at AAMI Park during the A-League Men Melbourne derby, attacking Melbourne City goalkeeper Thomas Glover and referee Alex King, and causing approximately $150,000 worth of damage to the ground.
The fall-out has been swift: Football Australia have handed out several multi-year or lifetime bans to some of the fans identified, police have pressed charges, and Victory have been slapped with sanctions after failing to control their own members.
The pitch invasion was the boilover moment of longer bubbling fan anger, not just at the A-Leagues' decision to sell their grand finals to Sydney for the next three years, but at the widespread exclusion of fans from decision-making processes in the domestic game and a gulf of mistrust created between those who run the A-Leagues and those who support it.
It created negative headlines around Australia and around the world and overshadowed what was, until then, a valid series of peaceful fan protests at the APL's grand final decision, creating yet more doubt and friction between various groups in Australian football at a time when unity and cooperation are needed most.
Matildas' Asian Cup exit
It feels like decades ago now, but in February of 2022, the Matildas travelled to India to take part in the Women's Asian Cup, a tournament that they hadn't won since 2010 but had made the final in four of the past five editions.
With several players, including captain Sam Kerr, playing for some of the biggest and best clubs in the world, it was thought - nay, expected - that Australia would sweep through the competition and hoist the nation's first senior trophy since the Socceroos' 2015 Asian Cup triumph.
But that's not what happened. While the Matildas barely got out of second-gear in the group stage, their run was cut alarmingly short after they were bundled out at the quarter-final stage by a resolute South Korea side, losing 1-0 to an 87th-minute winner by Kerr's then-Chelsea team-mate, Ji So-Yun.
It was the lowest ebb so far in the tenure of head coach Tony Gustavsson, particularly after the high of his fourth-placed finish at the Tokyo Olympics, and a moment that caused a lot of anxiety amongst Australian football fans for the Matildas' prospects at the Women's World Cup.
Four more disappointing results — against Spain, Portugal, and Canada — in the second-half of the year didn't help in that regard, with belief starting to fade even among the Matildas' faithful. However, a run of four consecutive wins in the final two windows of 2022 has given the Australian game something to cling to as it swings into the biggest World Cup year of them all.
Australia Cup final
It's not just the A-League Men that had to grapple with ongoing cultural problems. The Australia Cup final was meant to be a celebration of the past and future of the domestic game as ALM newcomers Macarthur FC faced one of the country's oldest and most storied clubs in Sydney United 58, the first National Premier Leagues team to make the final of the competition.
Instead, what the 15,000 fans at Parramatta Stadium and the many more watching at home will remember about the final was not Macarthur's 2-0 win but the Sydney United fans who performed Nazi salutes, allegedly booed the Welcome to Country, and sang songs and waved flags linked to fascist ideologies that emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia.
The former National Soccer League club was sanctioned by Football Australia in the aftermath and issued both public and private apologies to the individuals and communities affected as yet another cultural controversy in Australian football made headlines around the world.
It also put a hesitant caveat on the concept of a National Second Division - slated to be introduced over the next two years - with FA having to once again grapple with the ongoing dilemma of how to incorporate NPL clubs with particular cultural and historical roots into a national competition that strives for mainstream appeal.
New Year, New Football
So what do we hope for in the year ahead? What can football work towards as part of its project of reinvention?
2023 Women's World Cup and its legacy
We saw what the Socceroos' exploits in Qatar did for Australian football. Now imagine what the Matildas could achieve right here at home in less than six months' time.
On July 20, Australia will play co-host to the biggest women's sports tournament on the planet, and while no Women's World Cup host has won the title since the USA in 1999, a good showing from the Matildas in front of their home fans would do wonders to restore a lot of the faith that 2022 appeared to lose.
But it's not just the Matildas' own World Cup performance that will matter in the grand scheme of things. FIFA have promised that this tournament will be "the biggest and best yet," and with 32 teams competing for the first time ever, the opportunity for the entire game to rally around the world's best athletes and parlay the attention and investment it creates into the rest of the domestic pyramid - from the A-Leagues to the community clubs - is crucial.
Luckily, Football Australia have a "Legacy '23" plan that aims to do just that, creating funding and program streams for high-performance, facilities, leadership, grassroots participation, and ongoing international engagement to try and squeeze every last atom out of the World Cup.
But as the end to 2022 showed us, football can be its own worst enemy in these moments. Open dialogue, genuine engagement with stakeholders, compromise and cooperation are all key if the Australian game is to get the most out of this once-in-a-generation moment.
A-Leagues restores the faith
As the professional tier of the domestic pyramid, the A-Leagues play a central role not just as one of the most visible elements of the game in the eyes of the Australian public, but also as one of the two main development pipelines for Australian talent (alongside the national teams).
While the APL may be able to plug the financial holes that were worsened during the pandemic by striking more (arguably questionable) deals like the one with Destination NSW, the biggest repair-job facing them in 2023 is restoring faith with their biggest stakeholders: fans.
As aforementioned, the Melbourne derby pitch invasion was the culmination of a longer sequence of events, the subtext of which was the growing divide between the league's decision-makers and its supporters on the ground.
Instead of simply weathering the storm of ongoing protests and extended apathy from its most loyal base, the APL could instead be more proactive in addressing the concerns that 2022 raised: giving fans a more formal, structural voice in decision-making positions such as club and league boards; overhauling its own governance model to ensure there is representation of all 13 clubs that make up the men's and women's leagues; ongoing dialogue and genuine consultation with supporters via regular forums and panels; and greater transparency around who makes decisions that affect the entire league, and why, including the publishing of financial reports.
The APL has a particular responsibility on the women's side in the context of the Women's World Cup, with the 2023/24 season - which will see the return of Central Coast Mariners to the ALW, alongside the extension of the season - likely kicking off just a few months after the final.
With the tournament acting as a shop window for emerging talent, ALW clubs are in prime position to recruit the breakout stars and retain the waves of new fans that the World Cup is expected to create.
Football for good
The Qatar World Cup was, in some ways, like the most blatant version of Football For Power And Profit: a tournament that was sold to the highest bidder back in 2010, regardless of the impact its many ethical and logistical problems would have on players, fans, coaches, workers, or the rest of the game.
Qatar was not unique in this; there had been elements of such threaded throughout World Cups hosted by Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and Russia, too. But this was, more than any of those, the most unapologetic and naked of the lot as an exercise in sportswashing.
But that extremity also brought with it a kind of clarity: about what 'Big Football' has become and the kinds of communities who suffer from it. The tournament saw, for the first time, various forms of protest from player and fan groups alike, including the Socceroos' powerful video message calling on reform for migrant workers and legalising same-sex relationships. Just as Qatar reminded the world of how dark football can be, it also showed us ripples of light.
The Women's World Cup will be the next major FIFA event in the wake of the men's edition, and while the selection of Australia and New Zealand didn't cause nearly as much controversy when awarded back in 2020, there are many parallel social and political issues that the tournament — and Australian football — can address.
The disproportionate incarceration rate and deaths in custody of First Nations people, the ongoing mistreatment of asylum seekers, the treatment of trans and gender-diverse people in sport, structural gender inequality and unequal pay, and Australia's contribution to the global climate crisis are just a handful of elements that the 2023 tournament is interlinked with, be it through their players, fan communities, the lands on which they'll play, or the flights they'll all take to play there.
With the precedent now set by the actions of several teams and fan groups in Qatar, using their voices on behalf of the voiceless, the spotlight is now on the Women's World Cup and its many participants to use its platform not just to go "Beyond Greatness," as per the tournament's motto, but to strive to achieve goodness, too.
