The 55-year-old has captained the Socceroos and played for a number of Victorian clubs, notably 212 games for South Melbourne in the National Soccer League (NSL).

Wade found it difficult to envisage football ever taking over due to the breadth of coverage devoted to other codes by mainstream media.

“In this country, no (it will never be number one), because the newspapers and TVs will always push Rugby League and AFL,” Wade told FourFourTwo at the South Melbourne VIP dinner on Tuesday.

“The great thing for the AFL is that is their league is best competition in the world and the NRL is one of the best competitions in the world.

“The A-League is not and never will be one of the best competitions in the world. The A-League is good, but we’ll never be the best.”

Wade, who was a South Melbourne legend in the NSL, attended the VIP dinner at Crown on Tuesday night after the news broke that Brazilian and Real Madrid legend Roberto Carlos would be coaching South if they get permitted into the A-League.

Chairman of South’s A-League bid board Bill Papastergiadis is extremely confident that South’s induction to the league is a case of “when, not if”.

Wade was excited for South’s prospect of returning to top flight football but highlighted the real problem in marketing the round ball game.

“We don’t get 30 second commercials like the State of Origin receives two weeks prior to that,” he said.

“It’s all perception isn’t it? I wish we had the money to just go and buy ads and just promote games.

“It’s going to need real quality to back it up, you need substance but at the same time we need to promote it first. There’s no point being the best competition in the world if nobody knows about it.

“I think the razzmatazz isn’t there anymore but that has nothing to do with the actual football because I think that’s been very good.”

Wade was also confident South would be a breath of fresh air to the A-League given their rich history in the NSL.

However memories of hooliganism is always associated with NSL stereotypically, but Wade felt Australian football had come a long way.

“I think the biggest problem we have is that it would scare a lot of people because they think of the Hellas, they think of soccer hooligans, violence, World War III and spitting,” Wade said.

“People will come up with all sorts of stories and they probably have a lot of merit in those stories because that sort of stuff happened.

“How do we get rid of the bad part, but keep 99 per cent of the good part? That’s going to be the biggest ask.

“I think it’s been a great marketing tool saying ‘We are Football’ because that gets rid of the soccer violence, hooliganism and all those clichés people belted at us for years and years. Now we have to convince the general public, we know that it’s changed, but not many others.”

Wade also said the Melbourne Derby needed to come more from a territorial rivalry rather than it just being manufactured.

“It’s always sad when you see old footage of Joe Palatsides running away from scoring that goal (in the 1991 NSL grand final), nobody remembers Trimmers’ (Paul Trimboli) pass to him,” he said.

“Those are the sort of things that kids in the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne should know about.

“I think if we can grab a regional area of Melbourne like with Western Sydney Wanderers, it’s the west vs east and that is so tribal it works.

“Whereas Melbourne Victory vs Melbourne City, what areas are theirs? Where do they live? So if you can define ‘this is South Melbourne’, when you walk through the street you say ‘I come from South Melbourne’.”