Founded: 1961
FIFA affiliation: 1963
AFC affiliation: 2006
President: Frank Lowy
Coach: TBA
Football Federation Australia (FFA) is the governing body for the sport of football (soccer) in Australia. Before 1 January 2005, it was known as the Australian Soccer Association (ASA), which succeeded Soccer Australia in this role in 2003.
Among other duties, the FFA oversees Australia's national football teams (including the Socceroos (men), the Matildas (women), and various youth teams); national coaching programmes; coordination with the various state and territory governing bodies; and the national club competition. Until 2004 the national competition was the National Soccer League; the FFA launched a new national league in 2005, the A-League.
John O'Neill is currently the CEO of the FFA.
Following the collapse of the previous governing body, Soccer Australia, the Australian government established an independent inquiry, known as the Crawford Report. This report recommended, among other things, the reconstitution of the body as the Australia Soccer Association (ASA) with an interim board, headed by prominent businessman Frank Lowy. The ASA renamed itself in 2005 to align with the general international usage of the word "football", in preference to "soccer", and to also distance itself from the failings of the old National Soccer League and Soccer Australia. It termed the phrase "old soccer, new football" to emphasise this.
On 1 January 2006, the FFA moved from the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC), where it was a founding member, to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The move was unanimously endorsed by the AFC executive committee on 23 March 2005, and assented by the OFC in 17 April. The FIFA executive committee approved the move on 29 June, noting that "as all of the parties involved ... had agreed to the move, the case did not need to be discussed by the FIFA Congress", and was unanimously ratified by the AFC on 10 September. The FFA hopes that being part of the AFC will improve the standard of Australian football and give the national team a fairer chance of qualifying for World Cups instead of previously having to go through a sudden-death play-off, as well as providing access to the AFC Champions League for the A-League clubs.
Also, with many of the top sides in the AFC based in the middle east, it is more likely that Australian teams will contain their top, Europe-based players in away games in Beirut or Riyadh than Tahiti or Auckland, for example.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Football Federation Australia".
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