Saturday's Australia Cup final was meant to be a celebration of everything that makes Australian football unique: its cultural diversity, its storied community clubs, its passionate fan groups, its reflection of the nation's vibrant and intertwined migrant history.
Framed in the lead-up as a meeting between the worlds of 'old soccer' and 'new football', the game pitted Sydney United 58 – a former National Soccer League powerhouse that was founded by Croatian immigrants in 1958 and became known for developing some of Australia's best male players like Graham Arnold, Robbie Slater, Tony Popovic, Mile Jedinak and Zeljko Kalac – against Macarthur FC, a club founded two years ago as an A-Leagues expansion franchise and which is still laying down its cultural and historical roots.
The competitive context of the game was also noteworthy. Inspired by the English FA Cup, this year's Australia Cup saw more than 700 clubs from every state and territory play a series of knock-out games against one another before the A-League Men clubs were introduced in the final stages.
As per the original competition's romantic possibilities, some of the semi-professional sides – including SU58 – triumphed over their fully-professional rivals, thanks in part to the growing standards of the second-tier clubs and the timing of the cup to coincide with NPL finals, where part-time players are at their fittest, while the ALM pros are still in pre-season.
But what started as an opportunity to celebrate the game's unique historical and sporting traits turned into a reminder that the fault-lines that separate 'old soccer' from 'new football' remain as deep and dark as ever.
The rumbles started even before the opening whistle. According to multiple fans in attendance at Parramatta Stadium, as well as those watching the television broadcast, the traditional Welcome To Country ceremony and national anthem were drowned out by whistles, songs, and alleged boos from SU58 fans.
As the game unfolded, these "anti-social" behaviours, as Football Australia labelled them afterwards, continued.
Several SU58 fans were captured on broadcast cameras performing Nazi salutes or holding banners with ultranationalist symbols, while the larger supporter group across multiple bays repeatedly sang "Za Dom – spremni!" ("For homeland – ready!"): a chant associated with the far-right Croatian Ustaše movement that collaborated with fascist regimes in Italy and Germany to commit war crimes, including genocide, during World War II.
Hundreds of people watching the game took to social media to express their disgust and outrage, including prominent former SU58 players such as Craig Foster, who tweeted: "My apologies to Indigenous Australia. I condemn the horrific display of racist hate and stand with our Jewish and other affected communities. All involved need to be held accountable including the club."
Eight people were reportedly evicted from the venue, though no arrests were made. The following day, several organisations like Football Australia and its National Indigenous Advisory Group, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Professional Footballers Australia, and SU58 all released statements condemning the behaviour of what was repeatedly described as a "small minority of individuals".
"Sydney United 58 FC has zero tolerance towards any form of disrespect, racism or discrimination and is working closely with authorities to conduct a full investigation," the club said in a statement on Facebook.
"The club strongly condemns any behaviour that does not reflect the wider views of the club and its loyal supporters. It is also encouraging to see the wider football community denounce this on social media.
"The club is deeply committed to creating an environment that is respectful and inclusive, which also allows our community members to celebrate their heritage in a meaningful and responsible way.
"Those that do not align themselves with these values are not welcome at Sydney United 58 FC and their views will never be tolerated. Multiculturalism and inclusivity are two of the game's fundamental pillars and will continue to be a priority for our club and its supporters."
On Monday, FA announced they had issued SU58 with a formal show-cause notice under their national code of conduct and ethics policy, while NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet called for life bans for spectators found guilty of the "absolutely horrendous" acts.
The club itself could face further sanctions following investigations by NSW Police.
There is precedent for punishment over the public use of the chant, such as in 2013 when Australian-born Croatian footballer Josip Šimunić was fined and suspended for 10 games by FIFA for leading it with the crowd following Croatia's defeat of Iceland in a World Cup qualifier.
However, Saturday's final didn't just highlight the offensive – and potentially illegal – behaviour of a handful of individual fans at one of the country's many football clubs.
More concerning, it brought to light an issue that sources at FA told ABC have been "the elephant in the room" in Australian football for years — deep cultural cracks in the game that must be mended if 'old soccer' is to evolve into 'new football'.
Reopening the wounds of 'old soccer'
In August 1996, as the struggling National Soccer League was entering its 21st season, Soccer Australia (the national governing body) sent a letter to all participating clubs – including SU58 and other migrant-founded clubs like Marconi, Adelaide City, Melbourne Knights, and South Melbourne – ordering them to "remove all symbols of European nationalism from club logos, playing strips, club flags, stadium names, and letterheads."
The purpose, according to then-Soccer Australia boss David Hill, was to 'Australianise' the NSL in order to make it appeal to the mainstream (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) population.
In his book The Death and Life of Australian Soccer, football journalist Joe Gorman argues the modern A-League was founded on the principle of "de-ethnicising" the game: removing all signs of the cultures, histories, traditions, colours, and languages of migrant clubs so that football could have the broadest reach possible.
In 2002, the players' union wrote a 15-page manifesto titled Australian Premier League: For The Fans, outlining a new 10-team competition that emphasised five pillars: quality, atmosphere, community, local brands, and visibility. Everything that made 'old soccer' clubs unique was nowhere to be seen.
"The days of the ethnic club were numbered," Gorman writes. "Soccer's great tribes became dead men walking."
This scrubbing clean of football's deep migrant past – which was formalised in the now-removed National Club Identity Policy in the mid-2010s – has remained one of the game's longest and most divisive political decisions, and has caused ongoing mistrust between Australia's 'old soccer' clubs and its 'new football' governing bodies over decades.
It was a particularly sensitive spot for clubs like SU58. As historian Peter Kunz writes in Chronicles of Soccer in Australia, these football clubs offered rare places of safety and community to the tens of thousands of European migrants who arrived as refugees in Australia in the aftermath of World War II.
"In the sanctuary of their nascent clubs, they were removed from the critical gaze and either covert or open disapproval from many Anglo-Australians," Kunz writes.
"Migrants could talk to others in their native tongue and relax, secure in the knowledge that they were among compatriots whose customs and behaviour was implicitly understood."
These clubs were some of the only spaces available in Australia where displaced migrant communities could keep their own culture and history alive; where they could express their personal and collective identities without judgement or abuse; where they could maintain their languages and traditions; and where they could seek solidarity and share stories of resistance and survival.
Naturally, these clubs became inseparable from the politics and ideologies of the people who built them.
As with all communities, these world views were not homogenous; they splintered, overlapped, and sometimes stood in complete contrast to one another. Inevitably, they also included the perspectives of those who sat on the extreme ends of the spectrum.
In the case of SU58, support for the ultranationalist thread of Croatian politics is deeply tangled up in the country's history of independence from the former Yugoslavia. The Ustaše's leader, Ante Pavelić, is hailed as a hero by some in the community, with portraits and statues of him appearing inside several Croatian social clubs across Australia. For them, he is a figure of liberation.
SU58 is not the only football organisation whose members espouse such views, nor are these complex politics unique to the Australia's Croatian diaspora.
SU58 is, however, one of the biggest and, after Saturday's game, suddenly one of the most visible. What the Australia Cup final represents, then, is the challenge that various governing bodies have grappled with over the decades when it comes to the direction of Australian football: how to accommodate identity-based clubs in a sport that, for financial reasons, must try to appeal to everyone.
From 'old soccer' to 'new football'
Indeed, that question was arguably what resulted in the creation of the modern A-League.
In 2003, an independent committee published the Crawford Report, which was launched at the request of the federal government to investigate alleged mismanagement and corruption at Soccer Australia and throughout its competitions.
Two years later, in 2005, the modern A-League was launched; a league that was a deliberate antithesis to the now-defunct NSL.
Perth Glory – a successful club established during the death-rattle days of the old league – emerged as the club model that all other A-League clubs adopted. Teams would represent geographical regions, not cultural or ethnic communities. Their names and logos would all be reinvented using language and colours that were vague and inoffensive enough to attract fans from all walks of life.
As Gorman writes: "The idea was simple: the new franchises would be a privately subsidised, artificial shell – protected by the federation from organic inconveniences such as competition and relegation – under which the supporters could gradually create a new collective identity.
"As long as you left your history, your politics, and your culture at the door, everyone was invited.
"Almost every lesson of Australia's soccer history had essentially been a repetition of one uncomfortable truth: for as long as top-flight soccer included ethnic clubs, most Australians would not support it. The mainstream media would not support it. Corporate Australia would not support it. State and federal governments would not support it.
"The Anglo identity that underpins these institutions requires a system of total domination to feel comfortable, and so, in order to survive, soccer's national league needed to be rebuilt in the image of these uninvolved Australians."
And it worked – thanks, in part, to the luck of the timing.
In the afterglow of Australia's qualification for the 2006 World Cup, the A-League soared, buoyed by new broadcast deals, major sponsorships, and marquee players like John Aloisi, Tony Vidmar, Archie Thompson, Paul Okon, Ned Zelic, Juninho, and Dwight Yorke (now, coincidentally, the manager of Macarthur FC).
So as the A-League accelerated into its 'new football' future, the 'old soccer' clubs like SU58 – clubs that had carried the sport into its professional era – drifted further from view, relegated to obscure state league competitions or, in some cases, disappearing entirely.
New league, new rules?
This obscurity has arguably been one reason why the problematic political and ideological underpinnings of some NSL-era clubs have gone largely unacknowledged by various governing bodies and mainstream media over the past two decades.
But understanding the histories of clubs like SU58 is of particular importance now as the game stands on the precipice of significant change, with Football Australia signalling the introduction of a national second division, which could begin as early as 2024.
SU58 is one of many migrant-founded clubs across the country who are likely to express their interest in joining this more formal national competition, with the longer-term goal being promotion to the A-League after the two tiers are aligned.
FA now finds itself in an almost-identical dilemma to former governing bodies in trying to reconcile old soccer with new football: how to introduce clubs like SU58, with all the complex histories and politics that those clubs and their communities bring with them, to a competition landscape that is founded on apolitical appeals to the masses.
For FA CEO James Johnson, such inclusion will require these clubs to evolve and adapt – both financially and culturally – if they are to stay viable.
"We need to look at the DNA of football," he told the Sydney Morning Herald last week. "People that follow football in Australia … they need to feel that it's authentic, and it's genuine.
"I think the important point is trying to make the traditional clubs relevant in the modern game. If you look at Manchester City, for example, they're a historical club that, through new ownership, were able to transform – keep its traditional roots, but really modernise it.
"I think there's a lot of untapped value in the history of the sport, and our traditional clubs, if we look at our code here in that light."
While FA no longer have control over the A-League, they will be in charge of the new NSD and can therefore set the rules around license requirements and adherence to various policies, which could include a human rights-based code of conduct that encompasses fan behaviour.
However, the bigger challenge beyond policing individual and group behaviour is how to reconcile cultural and political ideologies embedded within the history of these 'old soccer' clubs that may be incompatible with the ethical principles of 'new football'.
As the players' union, the PFA, gestured towards in their statement on Monday: "An effective response will not be developed by focusing on whether or not these actions were inflicted by a minority.
"The key matter the game must address is the impact it has had on people in our community. Australian football must reflect on the constantly repeated belief that we are the most inclusive and diverse sport and instead focus on our responsibility to our community and society.
"That responsibility can only be met if the sport firstly ensures the safety and rights of those within it are respected and protected."
What that looks like, how it's enforced, and what the consequences are for non-compliance is yet to be seen.
But as planning for the National Second Division accelerates, and the potential for more moments like the Australia Cup final grows, what is clear is that these decades-old divisions within the game must now addressed, lest Australian football continues to be haunted by its own past as it tries to shape its future.
