One goal, many journeys — the incredible story of our Socceroos

It's April 1992, and Carol Ryan has just welcomed her baby son Mathew into the world. For all intents and purposes, the Ryans exist in an exceptionally normal pocket of the Australian experience. The western Sydney suburb of Plumpton is rapidly developing from a semi-rural area to a bustling, diverse residential hub. It's brick and mortar family homes. It's rectangular areas of green space to kick around balls of varying shapes and denominations. And it doesn't know it yet, but it's just become the home of a future Socceroos star, the first-choice goalkeeper for four World Cups, the captain of a team of young men with a shared hope for sporting glory. But Australia has never been able to produce a World Cup squad entirely on its own. The original 1974 squad included two Croatian players, and two years after Ryan's arrival in Sydney, another Croatian recruit is welcomed to the world. In April 1994, Miloš Degenek is born in the town of Knin in modern-day Croatia... ... before his family becomes one of thousands that flee during the Croatian War of Independence. It's a harrowing journey to Serbia, but one that will eventually lead them to Sydney. The Socceroos machine has traditionally been fed by players from across the European continent, particularly the UK. While Degenek's parents are trying to shield their kids from violence erupting around them on the other side of Europe, Cameron Burgess is born in Aberdeen to a footballing family that includes a former Scottish international player: his grandfather Campbell Forsyth. Three years after Burgess makes his arrival in Aberdeen, little Harry Souttar — who fast becomes big Harry Souttar — is another Socceroo born in the Scottish city, to a Scottish father and an Australian mother. Scottish representation is nothing new for Australian football. But the story of another continent is now starting to fill the pages of the Australian football memoirs. In September 1995, Awer Mabil starts life in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, after his parents fled unrest in South Sudan. From the age of five, he spends his days kicking around makeshift footballs and dreaming of playing in big tournaments, before his family moves to Australia. On the other side of the continent, Amara Touré has hiked north from the Salala district of central Liberia, through Sierra Leone towards Guinea to escape the horrors of the First Liberian Civil War. After almost three weeks on foot, Amara decides to rest in a refugee camp in Conakry on a peninsula that juts out on the west coast of Guinea. There he meets Mara, another Liberian refugee. They're both young, both exhausted, both searching for a safer existence, and a place to raise a family and grow old. A relationship ensues, and by 2000 they welcome their first of six children into the world, little Al Hassan. Four years later, his brother Mohamed joins him, also in that refugee camp, before a discussion with an Australian aid worker convinces Amara that Australia — not Canada or the US as he had first thought — should be their new home. ... Gideon Irankunda is guiding his young family from their home in Burundi to a refugee camp in Tanzania to escape the escalating civil war. In February 2006, it’s there in Kigoma that he and his wife, Dafroza, welcome the third of their eight children into the world, a little boy by the name of Nestory, a variation of the name Nestor, which means 'one who returns home'. Home, for Nestory, will become Perth at just three months old, before the family settles in Adelaide at the age of seven. At Croydon FC and Parafield Gardens, both north of the Adelaide CBD, the Touré and Irankunda families will embrace the world game, developing their boys into world class attackers who now wear the green and gold with pride at arguably the biggest sporting tournament in the world. Today, 26 Australians will band together in Canada with one goal in mind: victory at the World Cup. Their tournament will take them from Vancouver to Seattle and down to San Francisco, with hopes that their path will see them into the knockout stage and on to Boston or New York. This quest, though, started years ago, spread out across the globe in African refugee camps, Scottish suburbs and rectangles of green that dot our Australian cities. Like many of the best footballing journeys, it started inconspicuously for Mat Ryan. Before becoming one of the longest serving Socceroos players and captains, he was a kid from Western Sydney, where rugby league served as the beating heart of the Sydney sporting scene. In the streets of Plumpton, lined with red-brick family homes and dead-end courts abuzz with kids playing cricket or footy, Ryan first picked up the gloves in the under-10s. All who came across him knew greatness lay ahead. When he joined the Central Coast Mariners as a 17-year-old, he was in the shadows of his boyhood hero, Danny Vukovic. They'd attended the same high school, though didn't overlap, and shared

One goal, many journeys — the incredible story of our Socceroos

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