Soccer Fan Blog

It’s hard to admit that football, of all things, has been deprioritised in my life behind work, but that is the only real excuse I have for barely blogging last year. I remain emotionally attached to the QLD Roar, and fret whenever they’re playing whether I can watch it or not, and surf the soccer media regularly to punctuate my day. But I can’t say I’ll be blogging much for a while at any rate.

Moreso next year though. Jacob and I are going to the World Cup. I’m sure I’ll write a bit in the lead up, but covering the experience in my own ridiculous way will be an important part of the experience for me at least. That’s still a long way away.

What I want to attempt to get at here, in typical blog-tradition, is a discussion about what the hell I should do to organise this (to me) ambitious adventure. Is any of the handfull of people who read this blog going themselves? Have any of you been before? So far I’m thinking of finding a tour deal, but are there ways of getting the best deal and the best chance for Australian-game tickets?

Of course I fully expect, from reading about people’s experiences of the 2006, 2002 and other Cups, that regardless of how well we have tickets, accomodation and transport organised, that it will be chaos. Jamie Trecker (Love & Blood at the World Cup with the Footballers, Fans and Freaks), a notable and card-carrying journalist with expenses, found himself struggling and once had to sleep on a train station with dozens of other fans after a riot stopped the trains for a while. This was in Germany. Germany might be said to be among best practice in the world when it comes to efficiency, organisation and security. South Africa would not be included in such a list.

Now I consider myself a worldly and resourceful person but this one makes me a little anxious, and Jacob has never been outside very safe boundaries. On the other hand I will be at the quixotically auspicious age of 42, and Jacob will have just turned 15 – not old enough to drink, have sex and make up his own bloody mind, but at the same time old enough to… um… drink, have sex and make up his own bloody mind. Anyway, an adventure it will be, and I have briefed the lad that nothing will be guaranteed, that we will wear colours and use any groups of Australian fans as security, especially if we beat England on a dubious ref decision, and we will make absolutely certain that we meet a Norwegian single mother with her teenage daughter. Apart from these key things, we might have to wing it.

Anyway, if anyone reading has any advice at all, serious or otherwise, lay it down please.

The thing to do here in introduction is to apologise for not writing for so long. Yup.

The bad news is that as this A-Leage thing kicks off again I have realised that work commitments will prevent me from seeing many games at all. I’ll be able to see the Saturday night ones and the late Sunday night ones. So today’s game between Roar and Phoenix was the first true season Roar game I’ve missed for two years or so.

It’s good to see a few bloggers spark up, but fewer seem active so far (I can hardly be saying this self-righteously). I’ll be following the A-League media closely, and it’s good to hear the voices beyond the mainstream.

Now the Roar has these new players. To be honest I’d still have to go to the web page to remember their names but they sound hopeful and, ahem… hopefully they’ll be great. One of them popped a goal earlier today. The’Roar were tipped to lose that match so maybe the draw was good, and I’m sure Frank will say that, “with the two home games to follow” and all that. Let’s say in relative ignorance I’m cautiously optimistic about the Roar’s chances. I agree with Ed Vegas’s critique of Tony’s pre-season review, let’s say, for similar hopelessly partisan reasons.

And my fantasy team is up, in both Tony’s league (details in the aforelinked post) and Peter and Eric’s, and it has a theme. It is, as much as possible within the rules, a Queensland State of Origin Team.

My main problem was I could only choose four Roar players, and most A-League players from Queensland, unsurprisingly, play for the Roar.

In the mid-field I have Matty McKay of course, as captain. In the full vision of this program it is Frank Farina and Matty McKay who put up the challenge, to NSW and Victoria. It would be a home and away round-robbin with the winner taking all, played over a four week period of the off-season.

I’m getting my description of my fantasy league team, which has all sorts of compromises because of the rules, with the real vision behind it. To carry on with the latter the idea would be that any A-League or Youth league players could be called into the team. Internationals from the home state would be completely up to the club to negotiate for (good luck to them) but there would be no salary cap to do so. The organising clubs would naturally be Queensland Roar, Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory.

The overall philosophy of the idea is that it is a short tournament that could get a mass following in a concentrated way hence raising revenue and attracting people to the game, in a uniquely Australian way. There’s no reason why South Australia, WA or even New Zealand could not have teams in such a competition, except firstly that I’m not sure if they’d find enough home-state bred ploayers in the A-League to field, say, 16 including 2 goal keepers, and secondly because as far as I’m concerned the real contest is between Queensland and NSW and I have no good excuse to leave Victoria out.

Clint Bolton (SFC)

Andrew Packer (QR) – Jon McKain (WP) – Karl Dodd (WP) – Michael Thwaite (MV)

Zullo (QR) – McKay (QR) – Steve Corica (QR) – David Dodd (QR) – Robbie Kruse (QR)

Dario Vidocic (on the bench in Germany) – Tahj Minniecon (QR)

On the bench I’ve got keeper Griffin McMaster (QR), Ben Griffin (QR), James Downey (PG), Chris Grossman (QR) and Tim Smits (QR).

But for the Foxsports Fantasy League you can only have four Roar players, and are restricted as to which positions you can place only 12 players in to, so I’ve done my best within the rules, and have only had to draft one defender in to complete my team. If will not be competitive naturally, because it is constructed so irrationally, but I’d be keen to see someone similarly construct a NSW or Victoria fantasy league team for some real competition.

Because as everybody universally knows, Queenslanders are better.

The lead headline on the ABC News site at this time is Australian troops begin Iraq pullout: report. It was posted at 6.03pm, short minutes before Harry Kewell all but finished Iraq’s chances to get to the 2010 World Cup. Irony? I don’t know. It really doesn’t matter.

Funny old game that. I really thought it would be wet and weathery, but it wasn’t really. It was pretty packed out, but still over 5000 empty seats. Jacob and his mate Stav were waylaid in a food queue for a few minutes after half time so they missed the goal. The moment of the goal was jubilant and you’d have to say the atmosphere was ‘up’, but the crowded pedestrian processsions and train ride home were far more subdued than any victorious crowd I’d ever seen. It’s not like it was late or anything, even if it is Sunday night.

Overall I’d say it was the result I expected but I was very worried about Australia’s inexperienced defence beforehand, and rightly so from what we witnessed. As Eamonn points out, there was a good dose of luck in that win. I truly hope Neil is back from his family duties for the away game on Saturday or I will expect us to concede our first goal under Verbeek.

Furthermore, this is where we actually need Craig Moore to make himself available if needed. Like really, World Cups are the real written history of our country’s game, it is warfare between nations for the greatest sporting prize there is. ‘Retiring on a high point’ is all very well, but if the country actually needs you, there’s a certain moral pressure I reckon. Craig, we need you, even if just to help Australia get there. My hardly technical or emperical observations tonight were that our defenders have fine skills but require experienced leadership in the middle – someone who can play and position himself well and scream instructions to the younger blokes at the same time. It’s Moore’s experience that the Socceroos need back there, especially if Neil is out. And it wouldn’t hurt his game with the Roar to get a few extra good games either.

In other World Cup news the Africa Confederation started their huge 12-Group Round 2 of qualifiers yesterday and continue as I write. Togo and Camaroon won their first games as expected (against Zambia and Caper Verde Islands respectively), but my disapointment was Kenya being beaten away by Namibia. I started following Kenya’s progress because my housemate John, an excellent and knowledgeable football compatriot, is from Kenya. According to him they are in the easiest possible group (Namibia, Guinea and Zimbabwe) but they really should have beaten Namibia. John was devastated.

In late March a few heads rolled. The Cayman Islands, The British Virgin Islands, Aruba, Dominica and Turks and Caicos Islands, all from the North, Central American and Caribbean Federation, were all knocked from contention for World Cup 2010.

As I’ve been writing James Brown has put up an analysis of the Socceroos game. It was over a year ago, after James had had an uncharacteristically long lapse from writing, that I jibed in a comment, “Have you got a girlfriend James?” Well… ahem.

And my apologies for being so slack. The most important thing I have failed to do of course is wrap up the Blogger’s Cup.

Mike only won by a point (and congrats to Neil for such a close second), but he did so even though he’d absented himself from the country and the competition for several weeks. It can only be called a well-deserved win, and especially deserved, in a gold-watch sort of way, as he has farewelled the blogging world for a season. Hope to see you around in comments Mike and hope you come back before too long. Your prize, not Irish whiskey as promised because I couldn’t find a good single malt, but scotch, is on its way. Drink one to Australia’s humble but developing football blogging fraternity.

I don’t know if I’ll do the Blogger’s Cup this season, but I’ll definitely be blogging more as the A-League gets going again. It’s the Roar’s year.

PS. John over at A Seat at the A-League has just posted a good account of tonight’s game, as has Tony The Round Ball Analyst.

One of the things I learned as a novice fan following the 2006 World Cup is that the World Cup as I knew it was not the World Cup Competition as such, but merely the finals. This really got me, the very idea of an international competition with over 200 teams. This tickled the political and social chords of interest at least as much as the sporting spectacle.

Since the Qatar game the other night, Australia has entered the fray of the 2010 World Cup, and I’ve had some fun checking out how the competition is going so far. This is just some random notes.

Of 201 teams who officially began (or are yet to begin) the qualifiers, 31 have already been knocked out.

In October and November last year a preliminary knock out round in Africa claimed Comoros, Guinea-Bissau and Somalia. The rest of the federation has been drawn in 12 groups of four, to begin the round on the 30 May with Cameroon vs Cape Verde Islands and other games. They play for 5 places in the finals, including South Africa which has it’s place as host guaranteed.

New Zealand has all but won Oceania but definitely out in that Federation are American Samoa (remember them), Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Samoa, Tonga and Solomon Islands. On 23 June New Zealand will most likely defeat Fiji bringing them to 12 points and claiming the Oceania 0.5 chance, knocking out Fiji, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. Then they’ll have to wait for the Asian Federation to get sorted before they can play off Asia’s number 5. Oh what delicious irony if they have to play Australia.

A lot of teams were knocked out in Asia before we got to play, seeded as we were in the third round of play-offs. They are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Macau, India, Vietnam, Palestine, Nepal, Maldives, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Yemen, Tajikistan, Indonesia and Hong Kong. The remainder are in five groups of four, playing for our 4.5 places.

Europe is divided into nine groups of six and their opening match on 6 September is between Albania and Sweden. Europe is playing off for a whopping 13 places in the finals.

Games have already been played in the North, Central America and Caribbean Federation, but teams will not start dropping out until 26 March, when Dominic and Barbados play their second home-and-away to decide who will play off against the USA (good luck to either of them) along with a few other parallel games between minnow hopefuls. They go for 3.5 places in the finals,

South America may be one of the top two Federations but it is the smallest in numbers. They are one big home-and-away group of 10. Everyone’s already played 4 games but there’s a long way to go. Paraguay is on top with 10 points and Bolivia is trailing on one. The next games are on 14 June, with Argentina (on 9 points) vs Ecuador (3), Uruguay (4) vs Venezuela (6), Peru (2) vs Columbia (8), Paraguay (10) vs Brazil (8) and Bolivia (1) vs Chile (4). They are playing off for 4.5 places in the final, the 5th having to play off against the 4th from Africa.

I intend to maintain at least a watching brief of this meta-competition, and will no doubt stream a few of the games, and more as the stakes in the big federations heat up. I do this with a globe on my desk. Really, this game is cool.

However sparsely, I intend to follow an entire World Cup for the first time.

Well we won. Of course I’m talking about the Red Eye Pirates futsal team. We won 5:2 last night, which after a terrible run of losses, was the third win in a row. I don’t think my keeping is improving much, but our strikers certainly are, and we have a good structure now, completely mobile, with the single defender often running up if they have space with the ball but someone always doubling back, and one always seeking out the space up front no matter what. That’s it. There’s only four outfielders, so it just has to be simple and coherent. We’ve got that now. Hope I didn’t jinx our next game by writing about it, but we’re definitely feeling more confident.

Of course I really sat down to write about the Socceroos vs Qatar game. I don’t have much to say about it, but I’m pretty high on the win and need to say the little I do.

Over at the World Game site the headline is, “Socceroos do it easy.” It’s an understandable headline and this is not a dig, but upon consideration it’s not entirely accurate.

They didn’t look like they were ‘doing it easy’ in the first half. They played like they were playing Brazil in a grand final. It was very mobile and creative, but the important observation is that they did not take Qatar for granted. They played like they could lose if they didn’t give every single thing.

Whilst the less inspiring second half performance was no doubt the result of jet lag and exhaustion kicking in, and some tactical adjustment from Qatar, it could easily be a picture of what things might look like if the Socceroos started the game like it was going to be easy.

If both teams played a game out in the manner of the second half, either team could get the points. That’s why, quite aside from the China and Iraq games, which are much harder even on paper, we have to treat Qatar with exactly the same respect the second time. This time they had the support of the media and the commentariat in developing this respect. Next time, after the “Socceroos (doing) it easy,” it is going to be a greater spiritual challenge. Verbeek will have to lead in this though, and I think he is too clever to be as arrogant as Arnold was before the Asia Cup.

Only other thing is about the announcement by Moore that this was his last game for Australia. I say, “Nooooooooo!!!!”

Now mate… maaaaate, your country needs ya buddy. You’re good – up there with the best in central defense. It’s an important position mate. Goals get conceded there and games get lost. If you’re not getting enough games, go do a bit of marquee work in Europe or somewhere in the off-season. I’m sure something could be organised. But you are also one of the very few who have this wonderful advantage of actually living in Asia. Ok, close to Asia. I don’t want to argue about geography. We’re gonna need ya.

But sleep on it. Help the Roar trash Sydney on Friday, then play the A-League Grand Final. Have a rest for a couple of weeks, then get back to us. Please mate?

Friday… ah Friday. Can the universe deliver a sweet hat trick of wins for the week? Of hat tricks, it would be sweet indeed. Go the bloody Roar.