The Football Topic (Page 48 of 52)

I'm all for getting the referee's more respect as in rugby or most other sports. But only football can do this.

Mandatory red cards for players herding around a referee, touching the referee, abusing the referee. Only when they start doing this will managers and trainers wake up and start training their players to hold their tempers and emotions in check. How do rugby players do it? They have a code. Passed on from players to players via trainers and managers.

But how to do this fairly when the players have a case? Clear mistakes over disallowed goals, bad penalty decisions, playacting and timekeeping have to eradicated. The stakes are too high now.

By all counts Bobby Zamora's goal for QPR caused no problem. But what if it had been a controversial decision. The victory to Derby could have been worth 120million quid. To Rangers alone it was worth over 60. It is simply too much for a single chump too old to play the game any more, being paid a comparative pittance by comparison to be allowed to make those kind of decisons on his own, when we, within seconds have the full array of slow mo, close up, and 23 different angles to analyse it. Football, at the very highest level, just has to catch up.

Get the officiating right, and start sending players off. The latter would bring immediate benefits. 1 season of wholesale red carding would deliver a sea change in footballer thinking. If clubs were to align that with contractual clauses to withhold salary payment against suspension periods I think on field behaviour would see a dramatic improvement.

An experiment worth making in my opinion.

don’t disagree with you Mike, and as you know I am walking away from youth football completely because (largely) of the way it is run from grass roots right through to National FA’s. The game has the potential to do so much good yet is now consumed by money and the power and control of a few who base their decisions on what is in their own best interest and not that of the game. They are resistant to change, not being open minded.

There are so many little changes that could improve the wider game so much. Sin bins as an example would allow “power plays” that would improve scoring chances for a short period of time and might introduce players to being more versatile to where they play on the pitch; a team with two players sent out for 5 minutes would need to pull back strikers or midfield to defend - massive problem in youth football is players who only want to play in one position on the pitch. - I have had players give up because they only wanted to play as a striker despite not being any good at it, - the parental over emphasise on scoring goals being at the route of the problem.

My two kids play water polo to County and Regional level (they both did trials for GB) which is far more aggressive as a sport than football, - they did a tournament last weekend, one of their players questioned the referee on her decisions twice, both times he got sin-binned, the second time because it was his 3rd major fowl he was dismissed entirely from that game,  if we would have had a sub we could have played them instead, but we did n’t so we were 6 against 7 which will never work in water polo so we lost the game and the tournament, - lesson learned? He did not fowl or question the referee again all day!

I see Brack's early optimism has been a bit undermined. I'm glad in a way. I think the current results now put Moyes time there in a better context. I still don't think him a bad manager and I don't think he was out of his depth on the football side of things.

The players there were and some still are a bit resistant to change it seems. Even with the best part of 200 million invested they are going to be well off for some time. LVG has a big job on. Here's hoping they give him the time. I still think CL qually could be on this year but they need to start getting results before the Autumn to do that.

Tuesdays result was a shocker and no mistake. No comment from me though as I was at Upton Park to see the Hammers forfeit a lead and numerous chances to bury a Sheffield side who were workmanlike at best. Good performance by the keeper though.

Coupled to the fact that I only got into the ground 10 minutes before half time!

PL clubs treat their fans like sh**. No question. The game wasn't a sell out although a healthy 28000+ attended probabl due to WH pricing tickets at just 10 quid which was at least fair. I reserved my 2 tickets a week in advance. We got there at 1830 for a 1945 kickoff. The queue to collect tickets ran from the ticket office around the car park and along Green sStreet and stretched almost to the tube station! I reckon there were 5000+ in the queue. We got to the ticket office at 2015 and took our seats at 2025. A bloody disgrace. No apology. No information.

Regardless of the price, and that we eventually got the missing half hour back with extra time and a penalty shootout of course, the organisation was farcical. How a footbaly club with so many years of ticketing can f*** up so badly is beyond me.

We had paid in advance, reserved tickets done everything that the club wants and then they screw it up so spectacularly.

I've written to Brady, Gold and Sullivan. but I don't expect any form of reply. I am ashamed to be a supporter of West Ham sometimes. Clueless. On the field and off it mostly.

Soccer

For anybody interested, Australia is currently hosting the AFC Asian Cup 2015. (OK, this isn't Europe or South America but more that half the world's population live within the confederation).

However, a record has been broken with NO draws recorded in the 24 group stage matches completed today. The previous record in a major tournament was 18 at the 1930 World Cup. This is significant here where we endure the constant moaning of fans of other football codes about "boring 0-0" results in "soccer" football. It hasn't been due to massive mismatches either, with 14 of the 24 games decided by a one goal difference.

Australia joined the AFC (from Oceania) in 2006 and has reached the Asian Cup QF in 2007 and Final in 2011, beaten both times by Japan. The equation to go one further this time is to beat China in the QF, then most likely Japan (who are first up against UAE) in the SF. The Final opponent would come from South Korea (who we lost a group match to), Iran, Iraq and Uzbekistan.

Thanks for reading. If you're curious I'll report how it pans out.

So the Australian national team has won it's first ever major silverware! AET Australia 2 (Luongo 45' Trioisi 105') def. Korea Republic 1 (Heung-Min Son 90+1') in front of 76,000 fans in Sydney.

In addition (and I'm adding this so you might look out for these guys) I'm very proud that former players from my A-League club, the Central Coast Mariners took the player awards for man-of-the-match (defender Trent Sainsbsury, currently at PEC Zwolle) and goalkeeper of the tournament (Mathew Ryan, now sitting top of the Belgian league with Club Brugge) - both from our 2013 Championship side and in their early 20s. And Socceroo captain Mile Jedinak was a Mariner from 2006-9.

The MVP for the tournament was Australian midfielder Massimo Luongo, a 22 year old who ventured to England young to ply his trade and never played in the A-League. He is playing in League 1 with Swindon Town and was a revelation. I suspect he may not be long in League 1.

It should do but Blatter is Mr Teflon so it probably won't. He has too many backers in Africa , Asia and South America for that to happen. No political rants here please.

Certainly agree with withdrawing, however, sadly I don't think it'll happen