Abstract
On the eve of the final of the 2015 AFC (Asian Football Confederation) Asian Cup final between host nation Australia and South Korea, the host city’s major newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald , carried a story about a move among some of the west Asian (especially Gulf) nations to expel Australia from the Asian Football Confederation. 1 For those among the hosts who believed that securing the event had cemented the place of Australia in Asian football and in Asia in general, this would have been something of a shock. Although AFC president Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa (from the Gulf state of Bahrain) claimed that his reported comments to the Dubai-based Al Ittihad newspaper had been ‘manipulated’ and that ‘To read a story like this is really sad because there’s no truth in it’, there were clearly undercurrents of the opposition to Australia that preceded and followed its entry to the Confederation on 1 January 2006.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Sport and Diplomacy: Games Within Games |
Editors | J. Simon Rofe |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Manchester University Press |
Pages | 147-165 |
Number of pages | 19 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781526131065 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781526131058 |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Keywords
- Asian Football Confederation
- soccer
- diplomacy
- Australia