"Two significant losses, and increasing losses year-on-year, is obviously not a situation that is sustainable or acceptable." That's Football Australia CEO Martin Kugeler, and he's not wrong — he's just running out of time to fix it.
FA is preparing to cut up to 20% of its workforce, which translates to roughly 40 jobs from a staff of just under 200. A "significant reset and restructure" is how Kugeler is framing it. The full financial picture drops at the annual general meeting on May 28, but the direction of travel is already clear: the losses this year will exceed last year's record AU$8.5 million ($6 million) deficit.
The timing makes it worse
This isn't happening in a quiet period. Saturday's A-League Men's grand final between Auckland FC and Sydney FC — being played in New Zealand, the first time the decider has left Australian soil — is days away. And the Socceroos kick off their sixth consecutive World Cup campaign on June 11.
The cruel irony here is that Australian football has rarely looked better from the outside. The Matildas reached the 2023 World Cup semifinals on home soil, breaking TV audience and attendance records in the process. The Women's Asian Cup came to Australia earlier this year. The men qualified again. By any football metric, this should be a period of momentum.
Instead, the federation hosting all of that is quietly haemorrhaging cash and cutting staff weeks before a World Cup.
Where does the money actually go?
Kugeler confirmed the cuts won't affect the Socceroos or Matildas squads, and FIFA's minimum AU$12.5 million payout for World Cup participation will help — but it's clearly not enough to paper over whatever structural problems exist in the federation's finances. Hosting tournaments generates noise and national pride. It doesn't always generate surplus.
The exact loss figure, and the details of who goes and what gets cut, will become public on May 28. Until then, about 40 people are sitting with that uncertainty — while the sport they work for prepares for its biggest summer in years.
