It has never ceased to amaze me how football (soccer, in Australian parlance) has always been the poor cousin of Australian sport. Many other forms of “football” have greater attendances. These include rugby league, rugby union and Australian Rules football.
Football, commonly regarded as “the world game”, although played widely throughout the country at junior levels, fails to attract and support the game at national and international level. The Hyundai A-League has gone some way to putting Australian football on the national stage, but the competition supports only ten teams, and one of those is from New Zealand! I would have thought that ther national competition could have supported more teams. The English Premier League supports 20 teams, 4 other divisions or leagues and two Scottish divisions. Any talented player in Australia must seek an overseas club to play for if they are getting to make a decent living from the sport
Of course all that has changed now that Australia is a finalist in the Asian Cup. Australians are now experts on everything “soccer”, as they throw their “lot” in with the national side. Should they win against South Korea on Saturday next, Australians will see this an excuse for the consumption of large quantities of alcohol, increased absenteeism from work as they enjoy an additional albeit unauthorised public holiday, the sickie.
After a week or so, apathy toward the sport will return, especially as the rugby league season draws near, and national football will again suffer from reduced attendance, and return to its poor cousin status.
Words, By George! 
I think appreciation for a sport comes from having a heritage in the sport. It will take time, but Australians will start to develop “memories” of achievements and once nostalgia creeps in perhaps then it slowly seeps into the culture? Critical to this is International competition, the chance to give the world a bloody nose as they do in cricket and the rugby codes.
I suspect their is some truth in what you say. Having been brought up in the UK in the mid-sixties, I got to believe that football was a religion, a passion. Men worked five and a half days a week, and on Saturday afternoons, they went to the football. The atmosphere at the game was like no other! I guess I never understood why Australians never had the same love for the game. In the fifty years I’ve been here, I have noticed little change in the stature of the game, but as you rightly point out, international exposure will do the game no end of good.
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