A Look Back at the Olyroos Sydney 2000 Olympics Campaign
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On September 23, 1993, Sydney was awarded the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. This meant that both the Australian Men’s and Women’s national soccer teams would automatically qualify for the Olympic…
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On September 23, 1993, Sydney was awarded the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. This meant that both the Australian Men’s and Women’s national soccer teams would automatically qualify for the Olympic Football Tournaments in 2000 as the host nations, which is common practice for International FIFA tournaments.

The 2000 Olympic Games would be the fifth time that the Australian men’s Olympic football side would compete at a Summer Olympics. The four previous occasions were at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the 1988 Seoul Olympics, 1992 Barcelona Olympics and in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The Australia team, eight years earlier, at the 1992 Olympics made it to the semi-finals and eventually placed fourth, which is still to this day the best an Australian team has done in a men’s Olympic football tournament. The 1956 and 1988 Olympics saw Australia reach the quarter finals stage at both tournaments. While in 1996, Australia failed to make it past the first round.

The 2000 tournament draw saw Australia be drawn together with football powerhouse, Italy, along with Nigeria of Africa and Honduras of Central America. The Italy team were quite rightly regarded as one of the strong favourites before the tournament had begun. The Italians had some of the best young players in the tournament at the time, such as Andrea Pirlo, Gennaro Gattuso, and Gianluca Zambrotta, all three of those players would help Italy win the FIFA World Cup just 6 years later in Germany. Nigeria were also recognised to be a fairly strong side. As for Honduras, they were a bit of an unknown quantity, Honduras were not predicted to do very well at the tournament.

For the Australian team, they were initially predicted to do quite well in the tournament. But a mixture of injuries within the squad and players pulling of out the squad meant that Australia went into the tournament being significantly weaker. According to journalists at the time, Australia were only given a 5% chance of winning the tournament. Though, Australia possessed some good young players of their own, with Mark Viduka, Brett Emerton, Lucas Neill, and Mark Bresciano all being involved. There was still hope of the Australian team having a successful tournament on home soil.

Australia’s opening game of the tournament saw them take on Italy. The game was played at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground, with over 93 thousand fans packed inside. The match itself was a lot more competitive than it was thought out to be, as most people thought that Italy would cruise their way to victory. But the game turned out to be an even affair with both teams creating numerous chances throughout the contest. The Italian goalkeeper, Christian Abbiati, made two remarkable saves in the match, which prevented Australia from pulling off what would have been a remarkable upset win over the Italians.

Eventually it would Italian midfielder, Andrea Pirlo, who would make the decisive difference in the match. Pirlo came close to scoring in the 60th minute, as his free kick hit the cross bar. But in the 81st minute, a mistake by the Australian defence gifted Pirlo an opportunity to score. A gift which Pirlo would accept, as he scored the only goal in the game to give Italy a 1–0 win over Australia. Though Australia lost the opening game, there was still optimism throughout the country, as the Australians proved they were a hard team to face and had the talent to potentially go far in the tournament.

The hope and optimism that surrounded the Australian team heading into their second encounter against Nigeria would soon be extinguished. This was was the case thanks to Nigeria finding themselves two goals up by the 22nd minute in front of 38,000 fans at the Sydney Football Stadium. Though by half time Australia levelled the score to two goals each, this was thanks to goals from Hayden Foxe and Kasey Wehrman just three minutes apart from each other.

The momentum looked to have shifted and Australia looked as if they would go on to win the match. But the dynamic of the game would change on the 56th minute mark. Both the Australian captain, Brett Emerton, and the Nigerian captain, Celestine Babayaro would receive red cards after an altercation between the two. Nigeria would go on to score another goal, from Victor Agali. Agail’s goal proved to be the difference between the two sides, as Nigeria triumphed 3–2. This was ultimately another disappointing result for the Australian team, particularly after getting themselves back into the game from 2–0 down. This loss meant that even if Australia won their last game against Honduras, the Australians would still not qualify for the next round.

Thus, Australia went into their last game against Honduras with nothing to play for but pride and the opportunity to put on a show for their home fans, as just under 38 thousand fans attended the Sydney Football Stadium to watch the encounter. However, the Australian team could not have started worse, as the hugely talented David Suazo scored for Honduras in under three minutes. Australia managed to get a goal back in the 51st minute, thanks to a Honduras defender scoring an own goal. But just nine minutes later, Suazo would once again showcase his class and technical skills, by scoring a second goal.

Honduras would end up winning the match 2–1. This loss would cap off an ultimately underwhelming tournament for the host nation, Australia. Australia finished bottom of their group, on zero points, with just three goals scored and six goals conceded throughout their three games against Italy, Nigeria, and Honduras.

The tournament did however give the young Australian team a valuable experience, going toe to toe against quality players, all in front of massive crowds. This tournament also allowed everyone to see the beginning of Australia’s ‘golden generation’ of football players emerge. Mark Viduka, Lucas Neil, Mark Bresciano, Brett Emerton, Vince Grella, Stan Lazaridis, Josip Skoko, and Jason Culina all were both in Australia’s 2000 Olympic team and Australia’ 2006 FIFA World Cup team.