How to Make the World Cup and Survive the Fifth Grade by Carla Fitzgerald

Title: How to Make the World Cup and Survive the Fifth Grade

Author: Carla Fitzgerald

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: UQP

Published: 1^st September 2026

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: Could you coach the Australian women’s soccer team to victory? In her funniest book yet, Carla Fitzgerald serves up a winning middle-grade story about sport, friendship drama and finding the guts to have a go. Eleven-year-old Ronni is basically a professional athlete … at watching sport. If it’s on a screen, she’s glued to it – just like her parents. But when Ronni and her best friend, Kai, are recruited to secretly coach the Australian women’s soccer team through the World Cup qualifiers, she discovers life looks very different on the other side of the screen.

Suddenly, she’s running training sessions on the sly and sidestepping suspicious players. The team is floundering, social‑media critics (including her own dad!) are piling on – and worst of all, Kai thinks her tactics are way off. Turns out coaching is tougher than it looks! With their World Cup dreams slipping away and her friendship on the line, Ronni must choose: stay on the bench or get in the game?

~*~

Imagine being eleven, in year five, and sports being your life. Well, watching sports rather than playing, really. Unless its kicking a ball around at lunch time at school. This is Ronni’s life, and she’s pretty good at commentating and making calls based on what she sees on the screen. Who doesn’t do that, though? One day she wins tickets to a Matilda’s friendly as part of the World Cup qualifiers, and she heads off with her best friend Kai. Watching sports live has to be more exciting than watching it on a screen, right?

Well, this is where things get interesting for Ronni. Her commentary during the game is noticed by the CEO of Soccer Australia. And really, all she is doing is yelling stuff about the game and what she thinks should be done like a lot of people might. Anyway, this stunt earns Ronni and Kai a supersecret job with the Matildas and Soccer Australia as extra special ball kids who are actually secretly helping coach their heroes like Alex Burr and Ellie Moy. Of course, in this book, the players and coaches are fictional, and Soccer Australia is the fictional entity of Football Australia, but it all works well. we get to see kids living out their dream of coaching a top team, being part of decision making, and getting to live their own lives.

What makes this work so well is that the adults are present yet not present. Ronni’s parents are distracted by screens, work and sports on screens all the time, so they don’t pay too much attention, and Kai’s dad has a very special role to play. It’s a dream come true, and something that we know would never really happen, but it’s fun to imagine. It’s fun to think hey, wouldn’t this be cool to be plucked out of obscurity to secretly coach a national team, and help them qualify for the World Cup!

But it’s not all smooth sailing. Nothing ever is. Son, everything starts unravelling as social media critics pile on, things aren’t working as well as the CEO and head coaches hope, and Kai thinks Ronni’s tactics are off. But will he tell her why? Is there something else going on? It’s all tense and uneasy by halftime, and soon, Ronni finds that things could really get her in trouble. As the novel goes on, there are issues around who can play lunchtime soccer and who can’t. What’s acceptable for year five girls to do. Suddenly, things start to feel divided by gender in some ways as well, which only pushes Ronni to do better at her job.

She also knows she needs to think about things differently. It’s easy to criticise when you’re watching on a screen, easy to think things are going wrong, but what Ronni realises is that only the players and coaching teams can really know what needs to be done, that sometimes, you need to listen to the people in the midst of the game to really understand what needs to be done to score the goals and get the team where you want them to be.

Life’s not easy as an almost twelve-year-old, trying to get through school, work out how to get through to family, and learning to embrace your passion in ways that work for you. This is a funny book with a pretty out there but amusing and really cool premise that has heart. It has a message about trusting yourself, about following your heart and your passion and using what works for you and your strengths to do what you want to do in life. I felt that it showed what could happen when you rely on screens too much, and where things can change. It empowers kids to help them find their passion and their voice, to learn what they really enjoy and what they want out of life. There was much more to this book than just kids coaching the Matildas. It’s about dreaming, family, and friends, and about realising that some things are for everyone.

I think the ending was one of my favourite elements of this book, and how everything was resolved, as well as illustrating the impact of being chronically online or behind a screen throughout the book. And, it shows that everyone is human, and that everyone has flaws, and this is okay. We are all constantly learning and working out our place in the world.

What a fun book! It really makes football/soccer accessible, and shows that it is a game for anyone. Ronni and Kai were awesome characters who show that dreams can come true.