Angus Taylor had a couple of political miskicks this week. Then, on the pitch, he also failed to hit the target, for some reason deciding to knee a football instead of kicking it.Taylor on Tuesday delivered a word salad on multiculturalism and then failed to land a punch on Labor as the government rammed through contentious tax changes.At the end of the sitting week, the opposition leader tried to kick off an otherwise clever social media video using football metaphors to highlight Liberal policies. “We’ve got a plan to get Australia back on the front foot,” Taylor says, before somewhat awkwardly dropping a soccer ball on to his knee. Not his foot.Angus Taylor not kicking a football. Photograph: Instagram @angustaylormp“So what?” you might say, “it’s just a fun video amid our shared World Cup fever”.And the video, which includes the zinger “Labor’s toxic taxes deserve a red card”, was clearly drawing on the Victorian opposition leader Jess Wilson’s Commonwealth Games video that was a hit.Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailBut it comes at the end of a week when politicians were sadly too keen to use the Socceroos as a political football, capped, of course, by Pauline Hanson’s risible claim that the national team was an example of the “monoculture” she has struggled to define.SBS – one of the media outlets Hanson wants to abolish – reports the Socceroos’ 26-man squad “comes from at least 15 cultural and ethnic backgrounds”, with six players of African heritage and at least four from refugee backgrounds, including stars Nestory Irankunda and Mohamed Touré.The team released its own video celebrating multiculturalism early this month with Mat Leckie declaring: “Our diversity is our strength.”It begs the obvious question: under One Nation policies restricting immigration and refugees, how many of this Socceroos team would still be on the pitch?Former Socceroo and SBS commentator Craig Foster said this week that “football is multicultural”. He called the World Cup team “our national ambassadors of social cohesion”.Commenting directly on Hanson’s monoculture claims, Foster said: “What sort of madness is this? The Socceroos have always reflected Australia’s migration story. Australian football and the Socceroos are immensely proud of our multicultural makeup.”Allow Instagram content?This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'.“Attempts to reduce the Socceroos to a homogenous, monocultural group are not accurate,” Foster said. “Don’t misappropriate our national team.”While Hanson’s “monoculture” dominated much of the political debate this week, some Liberals thought her speech should have been a free kick moment for a Coalition looking to differentiate itself from rightwing rhetoric.Garth Hamilton, emerging as a chief Liberal critic of Hanson, said the opposition had received “two blessings” recently – a chance to attack Labor’s budget and a “horrible speech” from Hanson.Some Liberals saw these as the political equivalent of a tap-in goal from five yards with an empty net – but Taylor tripped over himself. On the day Labor did a deal with the Greens to pass its tax bills, many newspapers and the ABC’s 7.30 led with Taylor’s refusal on five occasions to say whether he backed multiculturalism.Anthony Albanese, who this week didn’t emulate Bob Hawke and declare that any boss who sacked anyone for watching the Paraguay game was a bum, at least managed to say the right thing on multiculturalism.“Modern Australia is not a monoculture, and it never has been,” the prime minister said.“When we look at the Socceroos, we see examples of that rich culture. People who are proud of their ethnicity, of who they are, but also who are proud Australians and representing our great nation.”That’s not to say the team is cheering on Albanese in return. Socceroo Jason Geria said they’d tried to “give [Albanese] a nudge in the direction of helping football a little bit more than he has” regarding federal funding.With Australia now facing a knockout clash in the round of 32, Socceroos fever will only grow next week. What will politicians say in Canberra? Will Taylor connect with any strikes?Just four months after rolling Sussan Ley, colleagues are quietly muttering about his leadership. He’s far from facing a red card, of course. But yellow … maybe.