Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Socceroos strange but true. No. 1
Brett Emerton, put up for sale by his EPL club Blackburn today, once knocked back an approach by Man United boss Sir Alex Ferguson. Fergie rang Brett's father Michael in 1999 and asked him to bring the boy over for a trial. Brett, whose favourite player was Ryan Giggs, decided against going because he wanted to give something back to Australian football after being school at the AIS. He had promised to stick around to play at the 2000 Olympics. Michael told Fergie to call back after the Olympics but he never did.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
How Australia plays - in a nutshell from Zonal Marking
Monday, June 7, 2010
The world's most disgusting Fantasy League
Congratulations to Host Advertising agency for coming up with a World Cup fantasy game with a deliciously naughty twist. Instead of picking a team and having the players score you points with goals, assists and clean sheets, the Fantasy Cheaters League rewards a different skill set altogether. Pick 11 players you expect to rack up disgusting fouls (5pts), blatant handballs (3 pts) and outrageous dives (5pts). The cheat of the match gains you 10 points. While most fantasy games have a limit of players from one country or team, a quick read of the rules suggests no such restrictions - so you could picking the entire Italian starting line up.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
We've been here before. Now has Pim got what it takes to lift this listless team?
In 2006, the Socceroos final warmup match was a similarly confused and erratic performance, a tight win over Liechtenstein characterised by sloppy passing, vague defending and a lack of cohesion. So, was the 3-1 loss to the United States last night - sharing all these characteristics and a few more besides - a good omen? Probably not.
Too much can be made of the powers of managers. But could anyone notice the tired face on bench bound Pim last night and not wish for a time when the Socceroos had someone capable of rousing them from their slumber, of bringing them to a psychological peak with a wave of that meaty arm?
It says it all that Pim's next venture will be taking over the youth set up in Morocco - a move that hardly screams ambition or tells of a man in wide demand as a motivator of men. It was also a weakness to feel forced into announcing his next destination before this job was completed.Can he take a team suffering fatigue and struggling to cope with the peculiarities of altitude and a trick ball and give them what Hiddink did four years ago?
According to Jason Culina last night, Verbeek has been hammering them in training. It was much the same four years ago when Hiddink slaughtered his players in the weeks before their first match against Japan and it helped them dig deep when they looked beaten. But how much of that success and subsequent group advancement was down to Hiddink's motivational powers, his gravitas?
Is there a Pim X Factor, as yet unseen, which will emerge when his team is a goal down with 10 minutes to play at World Cup? The senior players say they love him, but maybe that is because he doesn't rattle their cages as his predecessor did, famously leaving Cahill out of the starting lineup four years ago, or dropping Schwarzer for the third match. Tecnically, and tactically, the Socceroos are not going improve over the next week. Last night they ran into a better team, in a friendly it must be remembered, and faltered. So, what extra can Pim bring to the table, now that it matters.
What else did we learn?
If Vince Grella could kick the ball as well as he kicks his opponents he'd be a superstar.
The US are justifiably ranked higher than we are. Their speed carved Craig Moore to bits and but for an astonishing miss and a wrongly ruled out goal, this might have been a massacre.
Harry is a desperation play. If he can't be risked for 15 minutes in a friendly, what makes us think he can have any impact in the tournament? No matter what happens in the next eight days, he has played two minutes in a competitive match in 2010.
Tim Cahill will carry a heavy load. Hopefully his neck injury is just a slight strain.
We don't have a freekick option. Despite Tim Cahill's glorious freekick goals in a TV ad, we are bereft of someone who can take advantage of freekicks around the box. Luke Wilkshire, excellent at delivering from wide, had one tepid attempt. Bresciano, a player who has scored from set pieces in the past, wore the air of a defeated man when he walked up to crash his straight into the wall. His body language screams insecurity right now.
Schwarzer remains one of the world's great goalkeepers. Better than Almunia? Right up in the top few for mine. Two saves, one from Dempsey going across the goal into the bottom corner, and a swerving thunderbolt from Bradley, showed his class.
In front of him, however, we have a whole lot of problems.
What did you learn last night?
Too much can be made of the powers of managers. But could anyone notice the tired face on bench bound Pim last night and not wish for a time when the Socceroos had someone capable of rousing them from their slumber, of bringing them to a psychological peak with a wave of that meaty arm?
It says it all that Pim's next venture will be taking over the youth set up in Morocco - a move that hardly screams ambition or tells of a man in wide demand as a motivator of men. It was also a weakness to feel forced into announcing his next destination before this job was completed.Can he take a team suffering fatigue and struggling to cope with the peculiarities of altitude and a trick ball and give them what Hiddink did four years ago?
According to Jason Culina last night, Verbeek has been hammering them in training. It was much the same four years ago when Hiddink slaughtered his players in the weeks before their first match against Japan and it helped them dig deep when they looked beaten. But how much of that success and subsequent group advancement was down to Hiddink's motivational powers, his gravitas?
Is there a Pim X Factor, as yet unseen, which will emerge when his team is a goal down with 10 minutes to play at World Cup? The senior players say they love him, but maybe that is because he doesn't rattle their cages as his predecessor did, famously leaving Cahill out of the starting lineup four years ago, or dropping Schwarzer for the third match. Tecnically, and tactically, the Socceroos are not going improve over the next week. Last night they ran into a better team, in a friendly it must be remembered, and faltered. So, what extra can Pim bring to the table, now that it matters.
What else did we learn?
If Vince Grella could kick the ball as well as he kicks his opponents he'd be a superstar.
The US are justifiably ranked higher than we are. Their speed carved Craig Moore to bits and but for an astonishing miss and a wrongly ruled out goal, this might have been a massacre.
Harry is a desperation play. If he can't be risked for 15 minutes in a friendly, what makes us think he can have any impact in the tournament? No matter what happens in the next eight days, he has played two minutes in a competitive match in 2010.
Tim Cahill will carry a heavy load. Hopefully his neck injury is just a slight strain.
We don't have a freekick option. Despite Tim Cahill's glorious freekick goals in a TV ad, we are bereft of someone who can take advantage of freekicks around the box. Luke Wilkshire, excellent at delivering from wide, had one tepid attempt. Bresciano, a player who has scored from set pieces in the past, wore the air of a defeated man when he walked up to crash his straight into the wall. His body language screams insecurity right now.
Schwarzer remains one of the world's great goalkeepers. Better than Almunia? Right up in the top few for mine. Two saves, one from Dempsey going across the goal into the bottom corner, and a swerving thunderbolt from Bradley, showed his class.
In front of him, however, we have a whole lot of problems.
What did you learn last night?
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Football's Coming, Gnome
Anyone else feel we are getting the rough end of the pineapple when it comes to creative ways to support our World Cup team this year? Sure, we have a lairy playing strip made out of recycled plastic bottles, but so far I've seen nothing to compare with the English and US souvenirs pictured here. I think both do an excellent job of summing up their respective national characters. In fact, the England example (15 pounds) looks very much like Wayne Rooney in the new Nike ad, after it's all gone wrong. The American "Patriot Mask" ($US18.99), well they wouldn't make those anywhere else really would they? As editor of Football + mag I tried to redress this issue and had the Australian Makarapa commissioned from the biggest producer in Johannesburg. And yet, something is missing - it's just too ... classy.
Now maybe if they'd dressed it with the top of a pineapple... So what Australian World Cup souvenir would you like to see?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
From the Rose Bowl to Joburg: Here we go again
It's 16 years since I experienced my first visit to a World Cup, and it was nothing like I was expecting. Landing in Los Angeles, fresh from two years working as freelance on Fleet Street, was weird dislocation. In England, and on the subs bench at The Sun in particular, football, the games and all its baggage, was almost overwhelming. European nights at Highbury, World Cup warmups at Wembley, working in an office under a huge picture of Vinnie Jones with a fistful of Gazza's meat and two veg, was like oxygen to a young journo/ football fan. And then hot LA, an el cheapo motel downtown, no one with any clue as to why you were there. If you told them the football/ soccer World Cup you got a blank, distrusting look. It sounded too foreign.
Five weeks in a trailer in the Rose Bowl car park, with the odd epic game (Argentina 2 Romania 3, still the greatest football exhibition I've seen live) thrown in. Abiding memories of the mobile burrito van which kept me fed, filterless Camels I still regret, watching out the window as the LA cops brought in OJ, the sky full of TV choppers. And an earthquake. Well a tremor that seems scarier with each year. Seeing Al Gore and his entourage of secret service, wearing, and I'm not sure why I found this so funny at the time, large plastic accreditations declaring SECRET SERVICE.
Agence France Presse staff having a huge seafood feast and then dumping their prawn shells in the industrial bin next to our UPI trailer. Did they pay to have that bin left there for the next 10 days?
Rewriting American soccer copy into English to send to papers where they would doubtless write it back into American. And sitting next to a befuddled man from New York who couldn't understand why a defender was allowed to score a goal.
Soon to South Africa. What memories are still to come?
Five weeks in a trailer in the Rose Bowl car park, with the odd epic game (Argentina 2 Romania 3, still the greatest football exhibition I've seen live) thrown in. Abiding memories of the mobile burrito van which kept me fed, filterless Camels I still regret, watching out the window as the LA cops brought in OJ, the sky full of TV choppers. And an earthquake. Well a tremor that seems scarier with each year. Seeing Al Gore and his entourage of secret service, wearing, and I'm not sure why I found this so funny at the time, large plastic accreditations declaring SECRET SERVICE.
Agence France Presse staff having a huge seafood feast and then dumping their prawn shells in the industrial bin next to our UPI trailer. Did they pay to have that bin left there for the next 10 days?
Rewriting American soccer copy into English to send to papers where they would doubtless write it back into American. And sitting next to a befuddled man from New York who couldn't understand why a defender was allowed to score a goal.
Soon to South Africa. What memories are still to come?
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