The Football Topic (Page 40 of 52)

And they got Penalty....very harsh on Dortmund...

can't see City getting out of their group... Only positive thing to say that it is great to see Joe Hart packing such a great game, - for too many years great keepers have had extremely quiet games. Love to see a keeper doing his stuff, memories of Pat Jennings and Gordon Banks tonight!

Unrelated to football game on the pitch but this is just hilarious...

Newcastle United have today unveiled Whey Aye Man, a black and white caped crusader with the speed of Hatem Ben Arfa , the strength of Shola Ameobi and the reflexes of Tim Krul .

The costume is now available to buy in Club stores and Shearer's Bar, priced at £49.99.

Ideal for nights out and stag dos, it will also make an eye-catching outfit for home and away games.

http://mobile.nufc.co.uk/default.aspx?s … id=2938122

Newcastle Superhero Costume.....blimey!

Watched the other Borussia tonight, against Fenebahrce. Unfortunately, Moenchegladbach played like Citeh from yesterday and got thrashed 2-4. No outlet through the midfield, constantly passing across the back four but with no midfield to take the ball from them.

The Turks secret? Workrate. 90 minutes total workrate. Pressing the Germans high up the park. One of the stars for the Turks was Dirk Kuyt who had a great game and crowned it with a great goal. Fellow midfielders Christian and Caner were also tremendous.

It was men against boys. If they play like that they'll be quite a match in Istanbul for sure. Enjoyable game. Borussia are in for a tough season. 9 goals against in 2 games. I can see why now............

I have to say, I enjoy this Europa Cup football. Teams you don't always see, often quite open matches. I guess not quite so much for these teams to lose so the football tends to be quite open. Good stuff.

also quite good at handball on the line..... World Cup behaviour a few years ago was disgraceful. Also think that Kenny's blind backing of this idiot helped contribute to his demise at L'pool...

Well I suggest you tube trawling and watching Lionel Messi's performance for Argentina against Uruguay. He scored 2 and was the creator of the second goal in the 3-0. Plus there were a number of unbelievable moments.

His first goal is stunning. He makes a pass into the area and at that point he is no more in camera shot. the ball is played in...the keeper must make it...but no Messi comes from NOWHERE to score. When seen from a wider angle his pace off the mark is staggering, in line with his speed of thought.

His second goal is impudence itself. Knowing from a free kick the wall will jump he takes a chance and drills the ball on the floor. His chance pays off and the keeper has no chance.

When this Argentina plays like this, they must be a banker for the WC.

the real joy of football can be found outside of the Premiership, - and other so called top leagues, - the money has poisoned the real game. - Combine that amount of money with people who are unintelligent, arrogant, conceited, poor communicators etc and you have a game so far removed from what it should be. Sure they are brilliant players, but they could bring so much more....

The real game is lower down the scale....My kids team ( I coach under 14's) lost today 5-nil in a cup game, - but the game was and is about more than just the final score. - For the first time this season we switched to playing wing backs with only 1 up front crowding the midfield as we knew that the opposition were much better than us, - and our focus this year is on league before cup. 10 minutes in and we lost our powerhouse central midfielder to a (accidental) poor tackle and twisted ankle but the other boys stepped up and tried their best. We held it for large parts of the game only losing goals to silly mistakes but our victory was the way the boys adapted really well to a changed strategy. 10 minutes into the second half we switched back to 4-4-2 which the boys did brilliantly, - it is great to see boys develop their game and themselves as people. We have boys from 4 different schools, - 1 extreme is a private  expensive school, - and then the other side of the scale is 3 boys originally from Mauritius whose backgrounds is very different, - parents without cars so I go pick them up for every game, - seeing all of these boys together mucking about is what football is about, - it should ALWAYS bring people together and forget the pathetic tribalism that it all too often prevalent.

Sermon over

My advice go find a lower league team to watch if you can, or even a Sunday/amateur league math perhaps?

With 53 pages in 3 years, I guess there's a little interest here!
Since we've had a bit of attention on the forum while Joe's been down under, for anybody interested here's a bit about our status with the beautiful game. That question was asked about it in USA back on the first page.

Our national comp, now 8 years in it's current guise as the A-League, plays (at least) 3rd fiddle behind two hand-egg codes - Australian Rules Football and Rugby League, Rugby being also somewhere in there. However, last night in Sydney 35,000 people saw Sydney FC with Alessandro del Piero as their new marquee player go down 3-2 at home to the Newcastle Jets with Emile Heskey as theirs. Both ADP and Heskey got on the scoresheet. Last week in Melbourne the opening round derby between Melbourne Victory and Melbourne Heart drew 42,000. So watch out other codes!

My team, the Central Coast Mariners, with the smallest regional population base and certainly no money for marquees, has its first home game this afternoon vs Perth Glory (there's some serious travel in this league. Perth to Wellington, NZ being 8 hours flying). Sydney and Newcastle each an hour and a bit to the south and north of us respectively, are our mortal enemies! In keeping with the 'champion team' will beat a 'team of champions' we finished top of the league last year ("Premiers", for the second time in 8 years). But in keeping with Australia's other codes tradition there is a finals series - "post season cup" we refer to it as, as we haven't yet won it [/wink] - and people only seem to remember the winner of the Grand Final of that ("Champions").

Thanks for reading football lovers, if you got this far...