A-Leaque Soccer News Australia

Football is continuing to challenge Australian Rules Football and is now well ahead of the Rugby codes as the football code in which most Australians are interested according to the 2005-06 summer edition of the Sweeney Sports Report.

Its research showed that 50 per cent of the Australian adult population is now interested in soccer, the sport's highest level of interest since the Sweeney Sports Report was first published 20 years ago. The Report, recognised as Australia's most authoritative sports and sponsorship survey, calculates 'interest' by combining involvement of participation, attendance, television viewing, radio listening and print media readership.

Soccer's rating is now only four percentage points fewer than Australian Rules' rating, the narrowest gap between the two codes since the Report began. And the research was conducted between October last year and March, before this summer’s World Cup at which the Australian team reached the knock out stages.

Australian Rules' overall interest of 54% is only one point short of its record level. It has the highest proportion of attendees (29%) among all 50 sports measured by the survey and also the highest proportion (51%) of television viewers. Both figures are records for the sport. Rugby League (at 42%) is now well behind soccer in the proportion of people interested while Rugby Union has possibly plateaued (at 40% interest) after increasing its fan base virtually year after year between 1988 and 2004.

Australian defender Tony Vidmar is expected to resume his career in the A-League with with the Central Coast Mariners.

Vidmar had surgery to repair a blood clot in his left coronary artery, which caused an irregular heart rhythm and ultimately forced him to miss the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The 36-year-old is now cleared to return to playing soccer and will arrive in Sydney shortly to announce his future plans.

Australia will bid for the 2018 World Cup! With a good chance in winning the bid the FIFA World Cup would for the first time take place in the Pacific basin. Australia has some of best sporting facilities in the world to offer combined with the climate, safety and scenery to match!

England and USA have been mentioned as the some of the other candidates.

The next World Cup is in 2010 in South Africa.

Marco Bresciano will be playing for the Italian Serie A club Palermo next season. The deal will see Bresciano at least involved in UEFA Cup action as Palermo finished eight in the Serie A last season, but with Juventus, AC Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina all barred from competition in European football due to the fall-out from the Italian match-fixing scandal, Palermo is set to play in one of Europe's biggest football competitions.

It is the third Italian club for Bresciano after he played three seasons with the Empoli before moving to Parma and now Palermo. Bresciano played 123 matches for Parma and scored 17 goals. He was the top-scoring midfielder in the 2003-2004 Serie A season.

Ljubo Milisevic moves to Swiss team Young Boys from fellow Swiss club FC Thun.