The trip to Australia - a land that is far from promising - and it can be an end to Vietnam's dream

Australia. A European entity that is on the Asian football family. It sounds strange but it is. When joining the AFC in 2006, the country has just begun to learn to build a concrete football culture, something it lacked entirely. And now, when its football is just enjoying decent growth, it is facing an uphill task of winning all remaining four games, in order to survive.

But while Australia's task is really difficult, Vietnam is even in a greater issue: to win at least the first points ever in the qualification. Being the least experienced in this round alone sucks, but, pointless after six games is hardly acceptable. Now, beating Australia is the only way to keep Vietnam on track, which, in reality, more like a fiction than reality. Even a crisis-hit Chinese side still obtained three points from Vietnam, then leave alone how could Vietnam ever win a game. It's so questionable.

This dark reality is also intermingled with another issue related to the upcoming trip: a hostile diaspora. While the Communist Vietnamese regime, in an attempt to try to ensure their players that they always have fans in Australia, the history of Vietnamese-Australian relations are not that, in particular, so close. Not even close with the Vietnam War being the biggest legacy.

Now, we must take the fact the Vietnam is also where Australia began its search for football recognition. During the Vietnam War in 1960s, Australia took part as part of an American-led coalition of five nations, the others being Thailand, the Philippines, New Zealand and South Korea. Australia won its first international trophy also in there, in the city of Saigon, then-capital of the Republic of Vietnam. That tournament Australia won was the Independence Cup, held by the South Vietnamese government to boost its legitimacy against the communist north.

An interesting fact there was the final between Australia and South Korea. The latter was also fighting in Vietnam, but its troops had been accused of human rights violation and thus got booed by many South Vietnamese fans. The Australians feared the same to them, but in the end, the final ended in peace. That victory was Australia's only win in Asia, before they joined the AFC in 2006.

But that is Australia to Vietnam. What about vice versa?

Well, after the end of the Vietnam War, where the communist north conquered the south, violating the Paris Peace Treaty, South Vietnamese refugees began to flee from the country. Their journey was painful and devastating, with 1/4 of the refugees perished in the sea.

Australia was practicing a racist policy, called "White Australia" at the time, and only accepted refugees and immigrants from countries classified as "white". With the racist policy in mind, Australia had been very reluctant in accepting non-white people. However, the feeling of guilty had prevailed among many Aussies during the Vietnam War, which they began to witness the plight of millions of Vietnamese.

The plight caught the public of Australia and fuelled a massive uproar, many had condemned the policy as racist when the people of its former ally were leaving en masse from the newly oppressive communist regime. Because of public pressure against the policy, Australia eventually revoked the policy and started to accept Vietnamese into the society, the first Asians to be accepted since 1901. The work was done by then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who reviewed the policy in 1978.

Overall, the plight of Vietnamese people really triggered a sense of consciousness and feeling of solidarity among Australians. Many Vietnamese resided in Australia today traced its origin from the old South Vietnamese forefathers, therefore they develop deep hatred against anything communist. This continued to be in place today, and any attempt to desecrate the former South Vietnam flag, the yellow with three red stripes, would be met with widespread hostility of the locals.

Although football is not the biggest sport in Australia, as it is just growing in a slow pace, many Vietnamese people in Australia, those aligned to the fallen Republic, had already expressed their interests. Sure, not that a huge reason, but they were looking if the "communist team" should be tainted a lesson.

And then, there is another group of Vietnamese, they are overseas students and other Vietnamese economic migrants who came to Australia today. Since the 1986 economic reforms, Vietnam started to see a mass exodus of students abroad, many arrived to Australia due to scholarship reasons. While not all of them support the communist regime, their dislike toward the formerly yellow flag of South Vietnam is bigger and it easily motivates them to resent the more populous pro-South diaspora. This group has already rallied behind the national team's camp in Melbourne and even attempted to have signing tributes from the players.

As for the result, the match in Melbourne is more political than a game for many Vietnamese. While Australia is now affected by the pandemic and is still trying to get the squad on track, it doesn't guarantee any easier opportunity. The quality of Australian squad, though has no longer on its height, is still far exceeded that of Vietnam ten times. And this country has never considered football the most popular sport, an irony to imagine.

So why Australia is fighting to gain back respect, Vietnam is fighting to even gain a point. And this won't come out well...