Sunday marks the 20-year anniversary of a moment that changed the face of Australian sport.
On November 16, 2005, the Socceroos beat Uruguay in a penalty shootout to qualify for the World Cup, ending a 32-year drought for Australia on football’s biggest stage.
John Aloisi celebrates the Socceroos famous success over Uruguay in 2005.Credit: Vince Caligiuri
There have been multiple documentaries and a book made about it, so by now you should know it all by heart: Mark Schwarzer’s two saves, Mark Viduka’s miss, John Aloisi’s match-winning spot-kick, and the beautiful carry-on from Craig Foster, the colour commentator for SBS whose euphoric, guttural screams said more about what it all meant than any words could.
But there’s an overlooked aspect to that famous night at Stadium Australia. In the years since, our national teams have built a quiet reputation for thriving when the pressure peaks, producing a string of dramatic penalty shootout wins in tournaments and qualifiers alike.
Sure, the Socceroos lost to Japan on penalties in the quarter-finals of the 2007 Asian Cup. And, yes, the Matildas also fell to Norway in the 2019 World Cup’s round of 16 … and to Brazil in the quarter-finals of the 2016 Olympic Games, and to China in the 2008 Asian Cup final. So as a football nation, we’ve had more than our fair share of heartbreak.
For the purposes of this exercise, though, we’re pushing those losses aside to focus on five landmark shootout wins that, in their own way, reshaped the game, to ask a slightly more unsettling question: what if we’d lost?
For a walk down a bizarro memory lane, click here.
