That sense of belonging is helping shape a new generation of Australian footballers now scattered across Europe but still deeply connected to home.<\/p>\n
Many of Australia\u2019s brightest young talents left home early, trading comfort and familiarity for the relentless demands of European football in pursuit of careers at the highest level.<\/p>\n
Okon-Englster who spent his youth at Club Brugge and Benfica said those sacrifices have only strengthened his connection to Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve had to move halfway across the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve had to live away from my family for periods. Those are just sacrifices that I’ve had to make for football and I think they’re all worthwhile and they’re paying off slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Circati, now based in Italy as a defender for Parma, says it is not lost on him how fortunate he is to not only be playing football but representing his country at the highest level.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a kid, my dream was just to play football,\u201d Circati said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn’t to be a Socceroo, wasn’t to play anywhere else, just to be able to play football as a job. And now that I’m living in Italy, being able to travel back to Australia to represent the CommBank Socceroos and Australia, it does feel more special.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I’m back home, I do feel a deeper, stronger connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Italiano, wearing the CommBank Socceroos jersey is still the dream that drives everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve probably sacrificed a lot and it’s taken maybe a little bit longer than I would have would have hoped,\u201d the right-back said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that it’s here. It’s all worth it. I would do it all a million times over, just to get this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That sense of belonging is helping shape a new generation of Australian footballers now scattered across Europe but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,139524,596,44,85],"class_list":["post-695071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cba-story","tag-football","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}