Football Thread!

[Pavel]

england the real deal kure i must disagree with you.

france has only won one world cup and it was full of africans

thats true osiris. but the french team from 1982 and 1986 was really good and unlucky not to win.

[Jankovska]

Australia is going to win the World cup.
Go Australia!

No they won't Are they taking part?

[Daniel the Great]

Jankovska, they are certainly taking part in the world cup in fact i think they are the first team to arrive in South Africa.
They were un lucky not to make it through to the semi-finals or what ever it was against Italy in Germany when one of there players took a dive in the penalty box and scored the goal to win, and Italy went on to win the world cup lol.
So in saying that Australia is looking good for the world cup.

[Big Bad Sven]

In football its a sin to cop a goal from a corner. So i rest my case there.

Shakiri, probably is the only Shiptar i would like to respect, no doubt he wore the Maco colours with passion. Remember the game against Turkey in Turkey, the game against Bosnia in Zenica....great player for the NT, but never did he find a successful home for his club football...He was a nomad....

Shakiri seems like a good guy, why cant the rest of the shiptars in macedonia be like him. I remember reading a while back that he stated that he was proud to play for macedonia, which resulted in the shiptars hating and calling him a traitor LOLOLOLOL

Crazy and backwards people those shiptars!

[Pavel]

yeah not bad daniel.

[Warrior]

http://www.livescore.com/default.dll?page=soccer

Some more overnight results from friendly games....

South Africa has recorded their first win in the preperation stage....althouhg i dont thing they will go past the group stages. I think that might be the very first home based team in a long time that has not progressed through the stages in a WC. If memory serves me right even the US in 1994 made it past the group stage. Traditionally home teams do very well when hosting the WC. Japan and South Korea in 2002 come to my memory are two home teams that did well... Who can forget Guus and his master tactics in guiding Korea to the semis!!!
Australia will be back home after the group stages, they have no hope of beating any of their opponents in their group. Id say Germany and Ghana to get through from that group.....

[Prolet]

Australia made a big mistake of not calling up Croatia in the friendly, why would they play the whipping boys from New Zealand?? You need the best possible preparations, i dont like Verbeek's coaching tactics, he is no Guus Hidink thats for sure and if Australia gets a win in that group he should consider themselves very lucky.

The world cup rule is always that if you get 4 points you go through the stages which means a win and a draw is good enough like what Australia got in the last world cup. You do a rundown of Australia's side and most of their players are average at best in the world stages, there is not one Australian player who plays in an elite club in Europe all we have is a few above average players in Blackburn and Everton plus a few average sides in the Italian Serie A there is not one Australian player in the Spanish League.

Ghana will be the only hope Australia has of winning a game, the last time Australia played Ghana i think it was in Sydney, Australia won 1-0 and Mile Sterjovski scored the goal then he got a red card. Mikael Essien is out injured with a knee and thats a massive blow to them, but teams like Germany and Serbia are simply too strong whichever way you look at it.

Serbia probably has the most quality in this group believe it or not, if you do a run down on their players they have so many playing in Italy and England, players who play for the very best teams in the world and not only that they are standard players who play week in for their clubs. Liverpool just signed Jovanovic from a Belgium club who was the top scorer there, they have about 15 players who play for world class sides where as Australia doesnt have one player.

Germany does so well because they play as a team but individually most of them play in the Bundes Liga i think they all play there apart from Michael Ballack who is out injured anyway.

[Phoenix]

Prolet, you're such a negative and depressing bastard...
Who cares about practice matches, the team needs to get ready for the tournament in 17 days time, that's when the games will have meaning.
For now all that matters is getting the squad fit and injury free and working at altitude...sure we haven't got the big name players but we have heart and a never say die attitude and our trump card is Australian sports science which is second to none...our team will be prepared well and better than any in our group the rest is a bit of luck that things fall our way

[Prolet]

Phoenix, Do you know how much money you get for winning the world cup? You get 10 million just for participating so well over 100 million if you win the thing. Everybody is fighting to sponsor the Socceroos because Billions of people will be watching, if you have any success in the world cup the whole world will talk about you which again has the TV ratings,sponsorship deals and so forth. Its not just about being phisically fit and injury free its about getting the best out of the players and in order to do that they have to play against quality oposition and New Zealand who has about 90% of their players in the A-League is not exactly quality oposition they are ranked very lowly on the fifa list. Keep in mind that Croatia who is not in the world cup has already played 3 friendly games in the past two weeks, they are already getting ready for the European Qualifiers. Even our national team is playing 2 games in 3 days in Austria i believe we play Azerbaijan and Romania.

As for me being negative im simply warried that the Socceroos wont do so well in the group because its very tough, i trully hope they go through and i'll be very proud to see them do so well. I'll be cheering them on

Go Socceroos!!

[Phoenix]

Phoenix, Do you know how much money you get for winning the world cup? You get 10 million just for participating so well over 100 million if you win the thing. Everybody is fighting to sponsor the Socceroos because Billions of people will be watching, if you have any success in the world cup the whole world will talk about you which again has the TV ratings,sponsorship deals and so forth. Its not just about being phisically fit and injury free its about getting the best out of the players and in order to do that they have to play against quality oposition and New Zealand who has about 90% of their players in the A-League is not exactly quality oposition they are ranked very lowly on the fifa list. Keep in mind that Croatia who is not in the world cup has already played 3 friendly games in the past two weeks, they are already getting ready for the European Qualifiers. Even our national team is playing 2 games in 3 days in Austria i believe we play Azerbaijan and Romania.

As for me being negative im simply warried that the Socceroos wont do so well in the group because its very tough, i trully hope they go through and i'll be very proud to see them do so well. I'll be cheering them on

Go Socceroos!!

Prolet what relationship do you have with Croatia or Croats...I have never seen anyone else on here bang on about Croats as much as you do...

Secondly, you're putting too much concern in the result against NZ, the game served absolutely no other purpose than a half arsed farewell for the Socceroos, we were missing up to 5 regulars for most of the game, the players were clearly suffering the effects of a heavy training schedule.
The team needs to peak for the tournament, not 3 weeks before in meaningless games.

In Germany 2006, the Aussies were incredibly fit, they ran Japan and your mob the Croats off the park...if the Italy game had gone into extra time the Aussies could have probably done the same to them as well, unfortunately we got fucked by a diver.

I think our group in South Africa will be tough, extremely tough to progress from but there are real question marks over our opponents...

Everyone raves about the Germans and their WC record but I'm not convinced that this is their strongest squad, they've had issues with the goalkeepers, their strikers aren't in the same class as 2006 and they've had a couple of injuries to key players...

Ghana, who knows what you'll get, they have amazing individual talent but can they put it together as a team in a major tournament...

Serbia, same as Ghana...full of individual brilliance but a question mark hangs over their mental strength, if they don't start their campaign flying they could quickly turn on each other and their campaign will turn to shit.

I think Australia's order of games is perfect, get the Germans out of the way first up, hopefully the Germans underestimate the Aussies and we can get one point from this encounter...

Then we play Ghana, our best opportunity for the 3 points...

Serbia... by the time we play them they could be a total mess and we can get enough points to progress...I think there's huge expectations on the Serbs to do well and they'll be cocky and they'll let their guard down...that's Australia's greatest asset, a lack of respect from its opponents...

[Prolet]

Croatia is in the top 10 rankings i think and they would have been a good test for the Aussies, keep in mind that the last time they played in Zagreb the Aussies lost 7-0 in a friendly with Davor Suker netting a hatrick. You are missing the point, Guus Hidink is miles ahead of Pim Verbeek this is why Australia did so well because Hidink created a perfect stratergy where as Verbeek in my mind is 100 levels below Hidink in every way you look at it. I agree with you about the match against Italy, Materazzi got sent off so to loose like that when they had 10 men is a disgrace.

Phoenix, Goran Pandev wont be playing vs Azerbaijan, do you think we can pull away with the win?

[Makedonetz]

How do you think Macedonia will do in the WC?

[Spartan]

^^I dont think they'll lose a game

[Phoenix]

Croatia is in the top 10 rankings i think and they would have been a good test for the Aussies, keep in mind that the last time they played in Zagreb the Aussies lost 7-0 in a friendly with Davor Suker netting a hatrick. You are missing the point, Guus Hidink is miles ahead of Pim Verbeek this is why Australia did so well because Hidink created a perfect stratergy where as Verbeek in my mind is 100 levels below Hidink in every way you look at it. I agree with you about the match against Italy, Materazzi got sent off so to loose like that when they had 10 men is a disgrace.

Phoenix, Goran Pandev wont be playing vs Azerbaijan, do you think we can pull away with the win?

Prolet, I think you're missing the point...

The WC starts for Australia in about 17 days time, practice matches don't mean anything at this point of time...

Do you understand the need to peak at the right stage of a tournament, even in the AFL, the teams that are contenders for the flag will dramatically increase their training loads sometime at the end of July and into August then taper off so that when the finals start in September the players are back at their peak fitness...every athlete follows this routine, the good thing for Australia is that our sports scientists are the best in the World and they will ensure that our boys are physically prepared...

[makalek]

Pandev won't play vs Azerbaijan and also our other two starting forwards in Ilco Naumoski and Aco Stojkov won't play because they are injured so we will have a completely new attack. We are not a one man team and we did beat Croatia 2:0 a couple of years ago without Pandev. There are some players that will be extremely motivated as they are free agents and looking for clubs. I'm talking about Velice Sumulikoski, Filip Despotovski, and Igor Mitreski and there are others that have been told they can leave this summer like Goran Popov, and Tome Pacovski so there will be extra incentive for them. Also tomorrow will be Goce Sedloski's 100th cap for Macedonia so the players will want him to get a win for him.