page_title: Australia national soccer team
section_title: Nickname
hierarchical_section_title: Australia national soccer team / Team image / Nickname
caption_attribution_description: QANTAS 747, Hong Kong, Sept. 2010
context_page_description: The Australia national soccer team represents Australia in international men's soccer. Officially nicknamed the Socceroos, the team is controlled by the governing body for soccer in Australia, Football Federation Australia, which is currently a member of the Asian Football Confederation and the regional ASEAN Football Federation since leaving the Oceania Football Confederation in 2006.
  Australia is the only national team to have been a champion of two confederations, having won the OFC Nations Cup four times between 1980 and 2004, as well as the AFC Asian Cup at the 2015 event on home soil. The team has represented Australia at the FIFA World Cup tournament on five occasions, in 1974 and from 2006 to 2018. The team has also represented Australia at the FIFA Confederations Cup four times.
context_section_description: Australia's nickname, "Socceroos", was coined in 1967 by Sydney journalist Tony Horstead in his coverage of the team on a goodwill tour to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It is commonly used by both the Australian people and the governing body, the FFA. The nickname represents a cultural propensity for the use of colloquialisms in the country. It also represents the Australian English use of the sport's name.
  The name itself is similar to most other Australian national representative sporting team nicknames; used informally when referring to the team, in the media or in conversation. Similarly, the name is derived from a well-known symbol of Australia, in this case, the kangaroo. The words soccer and kangaroo are combined into a portmanteau word as soccer-roo; such as Olyroos for the Australia Olympic soccer team.
caption: Socceroos livery on a Qantas 747-400
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