The fallout to the Young Socceroos’ failure to qualify for the 2027 AFC Under-20 Asian Cup has been an “overreaction”, according to Sydney FC fullback and former Australia youth international Ben Garuccio but the failure is a reminder of the need for a “common goal” within Australian football to avoid these banana skins in the future.
The Young Socceroos missed out on a spot at next year’s U20 tournament following a 2-0 loss to Indonesia that left the defending champions third in qualifying and out of the race to book their ticket to China, and as a result, miss a World Cup cycle as well.
It marked the first time an Australian men’s national team has missed an Asian Cup since 2006 – a far cry from the heights of 18 months ago when the Young Socceroos got their hands on the AFC crown for the first time in history.
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Speaking on this week’s episode of the Football Friends podcast alongside Stefan Mauk – the second episode of the season is out now across the Football360 network – the pair took a deep dive into the failed Asian Cup qualifying campaign, what it means for the players and how the Aussie game can move forward together.
Part of the post mortem has focused on the impact of players not being made available by their teams, including Melbourne City pair Medin Memeti and Lawrence Wong, and Adelaide United sensation Amlani Tatu.
“It’s definitely an overreaction in terms of speaking about the way the pathways are and the way the next generation of stars coming through that they’re not going to be as good because a lot of them weren’t allowed to go by the club,” said Garuccio, who played for the Young Socceroos and Olyroos previously.
“I think it’s more so about getting a common ground in terms of all A-League clubs, and probably they need to do better with this, maybe all across the world, in actually having international windows for junior teams as well, where they’re basing these tournaments around the senior international windows, so that if you’re losing players anyway, then also these junior players can go.
“I understand that some of these tournaments, they’re not able to be created like the senior tournaments where they’re flying out for windows all the time, but they could just do it around a window, and if you have a four-week tournament, you do it one week either side, so these players only are missing maybe two games, instead of missing bits of pre-season or cup games or whatever it might be.
“I think that’s always been an issue, because even when we were young, we faced the same problems that we’d go away and then we’d come back and we’d lost our spot with the A-League team, so I do feel for these these young guys because you only get these opportunities once as a young player, and you take it for granted when you are that age, because you think that you’ll always play for Australia.
“If we look back, we’ve not been involved with the senior national team, but we look back to those days and how great was it to be able to go away and play for your country.
“It is a top, feeling, and it’s great exposure, but these guys maybe now don’t get to go to a World Cup or an Asian Cup. It’s the first Australian team since 2006 to not qualify for an Asian Cup.
“It is a bit embarrassing, they haven’t even got to the Asian Cup now.”
Mauk, who represented Australia at U17, U20 and U23 level, added: “Back in our day, it was mandatory in our contracts, it was a clause in there that said if Football Australia select you for a camp or a window, you had to go, and if you didn’t go, there were players that had got punished with missing those games.
“So essentially you had to go, or maybe some players had an injury that came up, so they maybe were a little bit under an injury cloud and the club didn’t want them to go, and then they played a week or two later.
“But it’s an interesting one.
“The A-League is trending in the way of playing young players, they don’t want to play young players because they like young players, they want to play them because they want to sell young players, and then that gives them a lot more money to then run the clubs profitably and to grow the revenue of the entire club.
“If you’re not going to Asian Cups, if you’re not going to World Cups with the national team players, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity of showcasing them.
“You’re actually almost doing them a little bit of a disservice because they’re not going there to help them qualify, and there’s probably a lot of scouts at these tournaments, and then their resale value potentially, of course if they play for Melbourne City and Adelaide United, they can still get sold, but if you go to an U20 World Cup and have a really good performance, well, your value’s going to go up even higher.
“I think there needs to be this mutual understanding and agreement, especially right now, when it’s in pre-season, ours used to be when the season was just starting, we used to miss the first week or two weeks of the season.
“I understood that, and that was a disaster because then the coaches were like, well why are we going to put you anywhere near the starting team, because you’re not going to be here for the first couple of games.
“That one made sense, now the A-League starts a little bit later.
“It’s a bit strange, but I think again, we all need to be on the same page, and the common goal should be what’s best for Football Australia, what’s best for the country, and that’s it.”
‘It’s not always sunshine and rainbows’
Fearless conversations. Those are the discussions Australian football should be having, and Mauk and Garuccio, despite both still playing, are leading the way.
It comes at a time when Aussie referees have threatened to go on strike, and there is no collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in place ahead of the 2026-27 A-Leagues season.
Now part of the Football360 network, the show’s most recent episode attracted a lot of comments on social media. Mauk said: “We got hammered last week in some of the comments saying that we were being negative.
“I actually didn’t think we were negative at all last week, we made a purpose of trying to be a little bit more upbeat about it, and we still got told we’re being negative, but what do you want to say about it?”
Garuccio replied: “This is the thing about speaking openly and honestly about actual issues within the game, because we can all come on here and sugarcoat everything, and sunshine and rainbows.
“But the reality is, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, and, yes, we need to big up our league, and we need to speak about all the positive things that happen, but, when there’s so many things that aren’t ideal happening, I think you also need to speak about that.
“We get caught up in a fairy tale world these days that if you speak about something, you’re negative. No, we speak about something because we care and because we love it.
“We do this pod podcast because we love and we care about the game, and we want the game to be in a better place, and that’s the only place that it comes from.
“It might come across negative sometimes, but it comes across negative because you expect people that are above you and that are doing their jobs to be doing their jobs properly, and the league’s not in this position, because I want to be playing in front of crowds of 5000 people.
“I would love to be going out there and playing in front of big crowds. So it’s not like that at all, it’s from a place of love.”
More on Socceroos coach Tony Popovic’s first press conference since the World Cup
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‘USUALLY DOESN’T WORK OUT THE WAY YOU WANT IT TO’: Popa’s response to Australia’s great dual-nation discussion
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