Socceroos / Matildas / World Cup / Asian Cup

[WilliamPowell]

If we lose to Italy, do we go out or what happens? 

They are out of the comp. It's all knock out stuff now.

I am not a soccer fan - find it rather boring especially when there is no scoring but the final 8 minutes was exciting - thanks mainly to Kalac's performance - even when throwing the ball in, in the last 3 minutes he turned it over.

In hindsight the selection of Kalac was a great thing for Australia - we canot afford not to play Schwarzer and Kalac playing proved that 

[tiga]

I really enjoyed the game this morning. I agree with you MT! Another crap performance by the Ref. They're actually making our maggots look good.  Maybe they need a referee's world cup beforehand to weed out the dead wood.

[mightytiges]

LOL tiga. I'm sure the Italians will get their choice of Ref  .

I just hope now that the Socceroos aren't satisfied with just making the Round of 16. It's a great effort given it's the first time Australia has made it but the fans should be the only ones in celebration mode. Let's hope we can do a North and South Korea job on the Italians  .

The American coach must be feeling like a right old goose now we're through and the USA aren't. LOL @ them getting a top 10 FIFA ranking. What a joke those rankings are.

I would hate to see a game come down to penalty shoot outs

My soccer pet hate. They might as well toss a coin. They should just let them play on with no substitutions allowed and first goal wins.

[mightytiges]

Just over 30 minutes to go. Bring it on! 

Btw did anyone hear the Harry Kewell song based on Boney-M's "Daddy Cool" played on SEN yesterday arvo? The guy in it who takes off Guus is brilliant  .

[Moi]

Phew, good save Swartzer (sp.

[Moi]

So many opportunities the Italians have had - scary stuff

[Moi]

How cruel 

[mightytiges]

 

Yes it was cruel but we have only ourselves to blame. We dominated once we had the extra man but didn't use it to our advantage and we were too slow passing the ball around and we did stupid long balls that were easily picked off especially by the world class of an Italian defence. It's no different to Aussie Rules. If you move the ball slowly then that allows the opposition to flood back. We missed the class of Kewell. We played dumb in the last 30 minutes and they picked us off in the last minute on the counter. A shame as this side was good enough to get past Switzerland or the Ukraine and at least make a semi final  . A wasted opportunity even if before the tournament we would've been estactic to make it to the round of 16.

As for the penalty - yeah it was 50/50 but the send off was also 50/50.

[Bulluss]

What a poo game soccer is

Not a hope in hell that it will take over AFL in this country.

[Tigertailz]

What a shame to end like that.I must admit that i have been enthralled by our campaign.I have always enjoyed soccer and followed the  English Premier league mainly yet i think the so called"beautiful game" has some glaringly obvious flaws such as one referee to control the match and timekeeping inefficiencies.
The main attraction is that it brings out  patriotism in us at the international level , but in terms of excitement and entertainment value, nothing comes close to Aussie Rules.

[WilliamPowell]

I am little confused as to why all the callers on talkback this morning were moaning about the Italian blokes dive. 

Players have been doing it for years - it's a weekly occurence in the EPL and many a game have been decided that way. Until the refs have the guts to stop awarding these sort of weak penalties it will always happen.

What I do hope comes out though from an AFL footy perspective is that all of the leagues perennial divers like Matthew Lloyd and Brad Johnson - realise how pathetic that sort of play is and the reason they get bagged for it is because it's not the way game (any game for that matter) should be played

[tiga]

I'm gutted! Enough said.

[PuntRdRoar]

As someone who started going to local soccer from the age of 3...sitting on my old mans shoulders at the old Middle Park watching South Melbourne give some decent seeing too's to the opposition, I gotta say that I think the Aussie boyz should be proud of there performance. What showed this morning is they are pretty naive in terms of football at the international level, nevertheless the learning should be fantastic experience. Viduka for all his reputation isnt that good at international level for us, I agree with OM21 that Australia should be using Kennedy and Aloisi as the front 2, Bresciano, Grella, Cahill, Emerton, Kewell make up a very decent middle 5, whilst Neill is someone you can use as a leader at the back. Australia has most of the squad it needs for the next World Cup. We just need to find 4 or 5 players to add to the squad, hopefully the Asian Cup educates them about how cut throat it all is. Anyway, we should be proud of them all and I hope to see you all at South Melbournes next home game at Bob Jane Stadium. South is was and always will be Australia's greatest soccer club, and thats why the Victory are scared to play us. So jump aboard the South express and we may even chat about the Tiges lol over afew beers.

[WilliamPowell]

I'm gutted! Enough said.

Can understand how you feel tiga.

Agree Ramps we should be very proud of the Aussie boys

No one gave us a chance in hell and we got to the 2nd round.

Not being a soccer expert I always thought that if we could win a game in the group stage and not get spanked by Brazil we would have done well.

From the results we got - we did better than well I reckon

It's a pity though that we no longer have Guus - he's been very good for Aussie Soccer

[mightytiges]

Agree Ramps the Socceroos have a promising core but we need to find a world class striker or two. Someone who has the class to finish and make something out of nothing. Kewell and Cahill can make something out of nothing but they are attacking midfielders not strikers. We also need to add pace to the team. We missed Kewell and Emerton badly last night in that department.

I am little confused as to why all the callers on talkback this morning were moaning about the Italian blokes dive. 

Players have been doing it for years - it's a weekly occurence in the EPL and many a game have been decided that way. Until the refs have the guts to stop awarding these sort of weak penalties it will always happen.

I think people are just letting out their disappointment because the Socceroos let an excellent opportunity to progress further slip. Once Neill missed the ball and went to ground he was a sitting duck. The Italian could have avoided him if he wanted to but as you say WP it's common practice for the attacker to make contact and go to ground and then leave it up to the Referee. Any soccer player in that situation would do the same thing where the team was a man down, physically tired with still 30 mins to go if it went to extra time and there was an opportunity to con a penalty in the last minute to win the game. The Italian played the percentages. On Sunday we'll see Didak fake for frees everytime he goes near the ball and con the umpire making us do this ->  .