The Socceroos play Kuwait at Stadium Australia next week in an Asian Cup qualifier and the game is a sell-out. There’ll be 41,000 people in the stands, whereas a couple of years ago, perhaps even one year ago, it’s fair to say ticket sales would have been more sluggish.

That’s an undeniable success for Football Australia, but it’s also a warning – the World Cup afterglow will not last forever. With most of the heroes of Australia’s World Cup campaign unavailable, the Socceroos are not the star-studded line-up that pushed the eventual world champions to the edge. Many of those players are expected to retire from international football, making the Socceroos a group of unknowns for many Australians.

Will it matter? Has Australia now officially got the bug, or will interest wane through a series of lesser contests played by the lesser lights of the Australian team? And how does Football Australia meet such challenges?

Australia’s new assistant coach John Kosmina has a few ideas, starting with how Football Australia should spend its money. Forget forking out millions for a supercoach. Funnel that money into developing the stars of tomorrow.

He has a point. Four years out from the next World Cup, it’s time for the young guns (like Mark Milligan and Josh Kennedy) and the better local players (like Archie Thompson) to become the next generation of Vidukas and Kewells, if not in skill and weekly earnings then at least as ambassadors (ie, they need to get their faces in a few Weetbix commercials). While it’s a reasonable idea, Football Australia will not ignore the success of the Hiddink experiment.

Which brings us back to the Kuwait game. A win will be reported enthusiastically and SBS’s prime time coverage will attract viewers, possibly millions of them. Further, a win in the Asian Cup is not an unreasonable goal for the Socceroos, and if that came against Japan or South Korea, Football Australia might start to feel they have cemented some of the gains made through Guus’s reign.

Between then and now however, there’s much work to be done by both men in suits and men in footy boots.