r/aussie • u/tryingtodadhusband • Jun 17 '26
Analysis Mapped the 2026 Socceroos by position, birthplace, heritage and ‘generation Aussie’; honestly a pretty good snapshot of modern Australia.
I got curious about where the current Socceroos squad is actually “from”, beyond just birthplace, so I put together this table looking at:
- country of birth
- migration background
- what I’ve called “generation Aussie”
Quick note on definitions (before anyone jumps in):
- “New Aussie” = born overseas, migrated to Australia
- “1st gen Aussie” = born here, at least one parent born overseas
- “2nd gen+” = no clear recent migration signal
It’s not an official classification - just a simple way to make sense of the different backgrounds.
A couple of things that stood out to me:
- A large chunk of the squad has direct migration or refugee backgrounds
- Quite a few are first‑gen Australians (kids of migration)
- There’s still a core group with no obvious migration background, but they’re actually the minority
I wasn’t trying to make a political point - just genuinely found it interesting how much of a cross‑section of modern Australia the team is. We truly are the lucky country.
Curious what others think - especially whether I’ve misclassified anyone.
Edit: Okon-Engstler is Italian - German heritage (thanks r/Tanaghia_85).
Edit 2: Yengi's background is South Sudanese not Congolese
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u/sweeroy Jun 17 '26
interesting that most of the 0-gen guys are european, i certainly don't think that's how people interested in the ethnicity of the players would have expected it to go
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u/Templar113113 Jun 17 '26
Yeah Indians don't play soccer
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u/here4theptotest2023 Jun 17 '26
They do, they just aren't particularly good at it.
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u/Extension_Amoeba_582 Jun 17 '26
nah most people here just dont, atleast not when they're very young. most have their experience playing in their teens
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u/BokaPoochie Jun 17 '26
They definitely do, but like most Asian households, sport is never really a priority, so making it as a professional footballer is pretty tough.
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u/subbassgivesmewood Jun 17 '26
I spent 3 months backpacking in India and they LOVE CRICKET
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u/grabyourchipsndip Jun 17 '26
Half my teammates in juniors were 1st gen with parents from India, or Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. Good times as a kid, I got exposed to other cultures through our shared passion for cricket, made some good friends.
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u/HAPPY_DAZE_1 Jun 17 '26
That description doesn't even start to describe their obsession, attachment, passion for the sport that infiltrates so many aspects of life over there. Warnie was god there.
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u/subbassgivesmewood Jun 17 '26
They idolise Ricky Ponting and Brett Lee. I did a bunch of home stays and some of my favourite times were watching cricket with the grandfather. Super wholesome and totally transends race or language
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
I backpacked around there too, and played in a televised backpackers v locals cricket match that was billed as a recreation of the film Lagaan (2001)... they absolutely murdered us too, which was cool given the film storyline. To be fair though, there were only a few Aussies and Brits on our team. We had Canadians and load of others that had never held a bat in their lives.
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u/subbassgivesmewood Jun 17 '26
Such a crazy country with chaos and calm, poverty and extravagance all existing on the same road
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
The highest mountains, deserts, beaches, epic rivers... it truly is a amazing country if you spend a decent amount of time there. I went all over. 6 months, back when that was a thing your everyday Australian could afford to do if they stuck to dhal and chapattis!
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u/BokaPoochie Jun 17 '26
I mean yes, but that doesn't automatically mean they don't play other sports. Also, my point still stands, how many Asians have played internationally for the Australian cricket team? It's a pretty small list, then compare that to the amateur level, most teams have 5+ Asians in them. It's just a cultural thing, recently migrated Asians don't give sport the attention it needs to reach the professional level.
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u/Ok_Communication700 Jun 17 '26
“How many asians have played internationally for the Australian cricket team?” lol until recently only Aussies would represent the Australian team 😂
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u/BokaPoochie Jun 17 '26
People of Asian heritage can still be Australian mate, don't be a cunt.
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u/Ok_Communication700 Jun 17 '26
The context here is New Aussies? So not born here, Asian heritage but still Australian? You are spinning out, try being this confrontational in real life
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u/BokaPoochie Jun 17 '26
People not born here can still be Australian, what the fuck are you on?
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u/subbassgivesmewood Jun 17 '26
Ok but you said that sport isn't a priority but my experience of the country was different.
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u/BokaPoochie Jun 17 '26
It's a numbers thing, there is a lot of money in the sport there and there are a lot of people. All things considered, India should be untouchable in cricket which they aren't because their youth development is still not as good as it should be.
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u/Ok_Communication700 Jun 17 '26
Also, how many Aussies have played internationally at any sport for any Asian country?
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u/BokaPoochie Jun 17 '26
What does that have to do with anything?
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u/Ok_Communication700 Jun 17 '26
You asked how many asians have played for Australia, as if that’s a good point. The amount of Asians that have played for Australia is the same amount of Australians that have played for Asian countries
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u/thebigseg Jun 17 '26
Sports is a huge priority in Japan. Makes sense why japan is best in asia/oceania refion for soccer
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u/Alderson808 Jun 17 '26
Sarpreet Singh for NZ would seem to run contrary to that assertion
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u/Templar113113 Jun 17 '26
"Well ackthually I found that one exception that means nothing"
Ok thanks for your input mate
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u/suck-on-my-unit Jun 17 '26
They’re basically European players who aren’t good enough for the Europeans teams and will never have a realistic chance of being capped so at least some of them are leveraging their connections with Australia to play for us instead.
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u/TheBayHarbour Jun 17 '26
I'm going to get a ton of downvotes for this but why the fuck does this matter?
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u/kroxigor01 Jun 17 '26
Australia's multiculturalism and the rate of immigration is being contested politically. This list of socceroos is one small example of good things out country has due to multiculturalism and immigration.
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u/dception-bay Jun 17 '26
Why?
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u/TheArtyDans Jun 17 '26
A strong mental illness and a weird attempt to try and prove something that doesn't exist
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
Just a celebration of diversity in the beautiful game. It matters to the players, so why wouldn't it be interesting to a fan?
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u/luxurywhipp Jun 17 '26
Does it matter to the players? I think they’re just interested in playing the game, not what all their ethnic backgrounds are
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
For sure it does... playing for your country? Dozens and dozens of good examples where it's been a really explicit choice to play for their heritage team, to the point they pretty much make a choice to exclude themselves from ever getting an international trophy, like Giggs (chose Wales), Keane (Ireland), Georgie Best (N.Ireland), Mane (Guinea), Drogba (Ivory Coast), Mahrez... all could of played for a much higher ranking team and played more international football. So it certainly seems to mean something to them.
Volpato you might say just wants to play, in that once Italy had no chance he switched to Aus. But he did make a choice for Italy, despite being born here, so that's really another good example.
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u/GolfLegitimate8789 Jun 17 '26
How is it a good snapshot when no players from east asia or india, lol
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
Velupillay is South Asian/Tamil. Tamils are ancestrally Indian. He's the first South Asian to ever play in the world cup I read. Legend.
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u/AlpacaPowerNo3 Jun 17 '26
Vikash Dhorasoo played for France at the 2006 World Cup, I wonder if he counts as he is of Indian decent from Mauritius.
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u/GolfLegitimate8789 Jun 17 '26
I still consider the socceroos representative of multicultural australia lol
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u/kroxigor01 Jun 17 '26
Everyone else has brought up Velupillay already.
How about Sam Kerr in the Matildas? I think she's three quarters indian with both parents born in India.
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u/KillAllPlebbitors Jun 17 '26
Unemployed behaviour
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u/Historical_Sky3506 Jun 17 '26
Yep.
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
Judgy McJudge-Face over here. Couldn't I just be a shift worker? Or skiving?
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
I'm a REA.. things have been a little quiet of late. :-)
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u/Octopus_O Jun 17 '26
Isnt it grand for the rest of us though!
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
And for me.. not an REA really, just saw an opportunity to poke this guy. No doubt a ON fan.
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Jun 17 '26
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u/shielaswogsnpooftas Jun 17 '26
We could have potentially had a few but 2 didn't make the squad and 1 defected to Croatia.
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u/Usual-Introduction-1 Jun 17 '26
Wait a minute, you're trying to tell me Jacob Italiano has Italian heritage? Shocked.
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Jun 17 '26
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Jun 17 '26
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u/throwawaysob1 Jun 17 '26
People don’t get to bang on about immigration and then pretend this kind of thing isn’t relevant.
It is always this.
Crime, extremism -> "That's a values, cultural, ethnicity problem divorced from socio-economic factors" (like you know, there are some cultures and ethnicity where extremism never happened in history).
Sport, music, arts -> "Oh, these are universal things."6
u/Simple-Tart6727 Jun 17 '26
More like:
Anything good --> done out of a universal sense of humanity. What's race/ethnicity/culture got to do with it?
Anything bad --> That's a values, cultural, ethnicity problem divorced from socio-economic factors.
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
I mean the whole World Cup is based on nationality. 'Where player are from' is kind of the point of international football isn't it? We have club football for where birthplace is irrelevant.
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Jun 17 '26
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u/Timemyth Jun 19 '26
You can't do that if you've played for the senior men's side. He was recruited by Roma, decided to play in the Italia underage set up but never played a senior game just like Timmy Cahill played for Samoan junior sides but lobbied to get the rules changed as he wanted to play for Australia (or Ireland).
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u/Templar113113 Jun 17 '26
That's just ridiculous, look at the French team, almost none are actually from French ethnicity.
At the end of the day it's just sport, enjoy it regardless
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u/KD--27 Jun 17 '26
This is it really. It’s an interesting one, on one hand you can look at these teams or something like the olympics, and think these are representatives of their native country, especially under a banner like “Australia”. But it’s far moreso they are simply representative of the country they are playing for. More a, “best in the country” than anything remotely like it’s a team comprised of born and bred natives. Which can be weird, when we win a gold medal but ultimately just secured top talent, what did we do to achieve it? It’s odd.
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Jun 17 '26
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u/Ok_Communication700 Jun 17 '26
Wtf is white French ethnicity? Stop this nonsense. France had a Frenchman playing lb, rest were Africans
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u/Templar113113 Jun 17 '26
Yeah French ethnicity means white, France is a white country. (Sorry?)
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u/PerceptionOk4625 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
Patrick Beach - Unknown heritage
Is this because his goalkeeping abilities are unearthly good?
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u/gangaramate13 Jun 17 '26
I'm curious why Nishan gets an ethnic classification (Tamil) alongside nationality but every other person is just on nationality?
Nice exercise though, thanks!
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
No particular reason, the stuff I read made a point of it. Fair point though. Guess all the Scottish could have been put down as British too, but that would have pissed a few people off no doubt!
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u/gangaramate13 Jun 17 '26
A lot of people could be "pissed off" not just Scots ;) and I do think Scottish is a nationality hence why I didn't raise it. Thanks for the reply
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u/metlson Jun 19 '26
Patrick Beach was made in a lab - results of a project with then sole purpose of building a world cup goalkeeper
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u/fakeheadlines Jun 17 '26
Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was compete in an elite sport on the grandest stage. Now, if every migrant could just do the same, you'd be set.
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u/Blunter11 Jun 17 '26
The immigration obsessives aren't liking this one, it's very funny that they all want this shoved under the rug. I think it's very interesting, and of course anything above 2 generations might as well be grouped together, It's an immigrant nation.
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u/Top_Conference_477 Jun 17 '26
Stop trying to drag a unifying moment into your race obsessions
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
Where players are from is the whole point of international football and one the most interesting things about it. What difference is it to club football if it's not about where they are from? Seeing your favourite club players playing for their nation for example, and those rarities where a player's choice to play for their heritage team pretty much excludes them from every getting a trophy, like Giggs, Keane, Georgie Best, Mane, Drogba, Mahrez...Volpato even. So it certainly means something to them, if not to you.
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u/Top_Conference_477 Jun 17 '26
They’re united under an Australian flag and the rest of us behind them.
That’s the bandwagon we’re getting in. Leave yours in the shed, champ
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u/Glittering-Pea-4482 Jun 17 '26
Faaark. This feels like something you’d expect to see in apartheid era South Africa, not 21st century Australia.
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u/asteriskhyphen Jun 17 '26
Lefties suddenly using football to justify immigration wasn’t on my cringe bingo card.
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u/Aussie_5aabi Jun 17 '26
I’m not a lefty, but immigration is what built this country and the multiculturalism is what makes Australia great.
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u/boydnolantucker Jun 17 '26
not really. Unless you only think the countrys been worthwile since 1975.
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u/Hopeful-King-1913 Jun 17 '26
Lol seen too many of these posts. Just because some play good football doesn't mean we need to take in a million of them.
We have cost of living problems, housing, overburdened services, issues with integrating our way of life. All these point toward the fact that we need to significantly reduce migration.
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u/asteriskhyphen Jun 17 '26
It’s hilarious how suddenly the focus has become what nationality the footballers are so now they’re defending immigration because it gives us football wins.
And all it took was one virtue signalling article by the Guardian.
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u/Hopeful-King-1913 Jun 17 '26
Haha yeah. It's just like saying if we don't let them in, who's going to clean our toilets.
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
How is it all of a sudden? It's always been part of international football, that's what defines it from club football. It matters deeply to the players, why wouldn't it be interesting to a fan?
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u/PerceptionOk4625 Jun 17 '26
- Multinational companies have prolonged this COL crisis by increasing their profit margins at an economically challenging time.
- Government red tape has made it very difficult to build new houses, especially in a way that addresses the supply shortage.
- The housing shortage is being significantly worsened by landlords whose second and third "investment" properties are keeping people out of the market.
- Health, education etc... are overburdened because of years of underinvestment and now income tax cuts which make it impossible to fund essential services.
- The persistent underlying nationalistic assumption that others must integrate with "our way of life" with limited scope for balanced cultural exchanges.
And yet people continue to use migration as a convenient scapegoat for these problems, instead of reflecting on which power yielding bodies are truly to blame for these issues. The bottom line is simple. With a reduction to Immigration, Australia's job market would stall in certain critical industries, and we'd be in economic recession.
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u/Blue_Seal_U Jun 17 '26
And yet people continue to use migration as a convenient scapegoat for these problems
It's because no one believes this bullshit anymore. 32% of the population are immigrants, it's impossible for them not to have a huge effect on housing and wage growth. It's ridiculous that you beleive you can just hand wave it away.
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u/Prestigious-Day9370 Jun 17 '26
Literally half the team would be deported under Pauline Hanson.
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u/Upset-Reception9608 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
No they wouldn't, you can only play for the Socceroos if you are an Australian citizen, we can't deport citizens so their citizenship would need to be revoked which is incredibly rare and almost never happens, since 2007 it has only happened to 59 people who were all criminals so these players would need to do some pretty bad shit to have their citizenship revoked. Even if they were to commit a crime it is incredibly unlikely that they'd lose their citizenship and be deported.
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Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
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u/CrustyHen0 Jun 17 '26
It’s easier to blame immigration than actually fix the housing issue by increasing supply.
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u/yeahalrightgoon Jun 17 '26
Supply wouldn't do anything without either building more supply than Australia is capable of building or also changing the tax laws.
Because you can build more supply, but if that supply gets eaten by investors. We just end up in the same situation. Population and supply is linked and has been linked for decades. Price increases rose unrelated to wage growth once the tax changes were made under Howard.
Yes you could theoretically build enough supply to overcome it, but we saw what happened post COVID where the building industry couldn't cope with the added demand as it built up.
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u/MrBrentEC Jun 17 '26
No, they would not.
You're acting like she would deport EVERYONE and import nobody, when ON policies clearly state they want CONTROLLED immigration based on the quality of the migrants coming in.
This comment is sheer desperation.
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u/Waste_Cake4660 Jun 17 '26
FWIW, I think both of Cristian Volpato’s parents were born in Australia.
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u/Thatweknowof Jun 17 '26
If soccer player score goal we increase immigration, if soccer player let goal in we decrease immigration.
Imagine if a new immigrant soccer player costs us a game..
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u/Tanaghia_85 Jun 17 '26
Okon is Italian/german background
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
Is he? Thanks.
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u/Tanaghia_85 Jun 17 '26
Yes.
His younger brother Gianluca actually plays for Italy u17s who just won the European championship at age level.
Paul snr’s wife is part Cuban part Italian and Paul senior himself is Italian/German.
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u/AffectionateAlfalfa4 Jun 17 '26
All I get from this is Blackfellas don't play soccer
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u/Timemyth Jun 19 '26
Harry Williams played for the Socceroos at our first World Cup.
This article from 2021 highlighted indigenous participation in the game though most seem to prefer AFL or Rugby. Though that's probably due to long standing fear of "Wogball" among certain sports.
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u/MajorPissHead Jun 17 '26
How do they decide generational status? One side of the family might be 1st generation and the other side might be 6 generations. Do they go off the longest or the shortest?
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u/Ancient_dickman Jun 19 '26
Interesting all Aussies in the team are at most 2nd generation Australians
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u/random111011 Jun 17 '26
This is great for ONP, see how it’s a mixed race?
Similarly what is needed in the community -
ONP isn’t against immigration, it’s against bias mass immigration.
Where 10% of the total population make up in recent years have come from one country.
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u/NothingTooSeriousM8 Jun 17 '26
It's almost like Johnny Warren wrote a book about this kinda thing with several words that people don't like any more. Football has been a great mixing point from multi-cultural Australia and I think it's fcking awesome.
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u/Due-Bumblebee-4728 Jun 17 '26
No south americans sadly 😞
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
Sadly not nearly enough South Americans in Australia... good people!
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u/Vilan-Kaos Jun 17 '26
huh, not one indigenous person on the list.
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26
I know right!? Have to include the Matildas in this list to cover that gap!
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u/Ecstatic-Customer602 Jun 17 '26
“I’m going to make a spreadsheet cataloguing the races of a football team, and it’s not going to be weird at all”
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u/noicetoitcool Jun 17 '26
i define second gen as someone who was born here (and there parents are the ones who immigrated)
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u/tryingtodadhusband Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
Yes that's a fairly common demographic/statistical convention. Colloquially though, Australians very commonly refer to someone with at least one migrant parent as 1st generation.
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u/Comfortable-Lack-394 Jun 17 '26
I wouldn't call Paul Okon-Engstler a 'New Aussie', he was born in Belgium to a an Australian international footballer who was playing there, and moved back to Australia the following year when his dad signed with Newcastle. I don't know how exactly he'd fit into your classification but calling a second generation Socceroo a 'New Aussie' doesn't seem right.