May 27th, 2013

And there we go – that’s club football over for another season!
On Saturday night Bayern Munich defeated Borussia Dortmund 2-1 to be crowned champions of Europe. The all German final, which was nicknamed “The Sausagefest” by certain bloggers, was decided by a bit of Frank Ribery and Arjen Robben magic in the dying minutes. Munich has not celebrated this hard since… well, last October.

What to watch during the off season? Well there’s the Socceroos’ final World Cup Qualifiers, against traditional rivals Japan, Jordan and Iraq. We should be okay. Don’t listen to the panic of the mainstream media. For calm analysis just follow me on twitter @dannymcginlay where I also RT funny jokes.

Keeping with international matches, the Confederations Cup will play out in Brazil next month. This is a dress rehearsal for next year’s world cup and is played out by all the great sides – Brazil, Spain, Italy, Nigeria, Mexico, Uruguay, Japan and of course Tahiti. This blogger is completely on Team Tahiti as all of Australia should be! A phrase you will hear a lot over the next month – Tahiti’s On! [Say it aloud… still don’t get it? Neither did my wife. But English isn’t her first language.]

To end the year I leave you with my three favourite moments of the 2012-2013 season.
#3 Celtic 2-1 Barcelona.
The Glasgow club were celebrating their 125th birthday, and they did it by defeating the greatest team in the world! Fairytale stuff. The only thing that ruins the memory of that night is the music in this video – I really tried to get better highlights. Sorry.

#2 Victory 2-1 Heart
For some reason the Victorians always struggled to beat their cross town rivals Heart, and at the Christmas Derby it looked like the boys in red had scored an unlikely draw – but Archie Thompson had other thoughts –

#1 Cute Kid 1-0 Desire to not have kids.
The Chelsea reserve goalkeeper Ross Turnbull’s two year old son takes over the end of season speeches by scoring the cutest goal in the history of everything.

The last six months…

Hi everyone, I’m back from my honeymoon. It was great, thanks. Football related highlights were: Watching Celtic defeat Barcelona in a meth lab posing as an Irish Club in Cambridge; visiting the San Siro and watching Inter Milan completely outclass their opponents and still draw 2-2, and watching my beloved Celtic live at Paradise. [Never mind it was a dull 1-1 draw with St Johnstone]

So here’s what happened in the last six months – not in order.

Spain won Euro 2012. You probably knew that, if you didn’t then some of the following jokes aren’t going to make sense as they require a basic knowledge of football. You may have just forgotten it, which is understandable, as Spain can be quite dull sometimes.

Chelsea’s Champions League winning manager Robert DeMatteo was sacked for daring to lose two matches.
He was replaced by former Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez, who if it wasn’t for Nick Clegg would be the most hated man in Britain.

Fernando Torres remained rubbish
as did Andy Carroll

Melbourne Victory gained super manager Ange Postecoglou but lost Harry Kewell who went on to play for… as yet nobody.

Brighton & Hove Albion were voted Britain’s poshest fans! The Championship side immediately rubbished the notion, according to their butlers.

Liverpool poached Brendan Rogers from Swansea City, proving that the Reds can ruin even the most promising of Managers.

Rangers FC were liquidated and a new team has replaced them in the Scottish league 3rd division, creatively named “The Rangers”

Robin Van Persie left Arsenal for Manchester United. Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke was devastated at the loss and wouldn’t talk to reporters until after he had gone for a swim in his Scrooge McDuck style money-pool.

Alexandro Del Piero joined Sydney FC and has bravely led them to the bottom of the table. [However this is huge news in Italy, when I was at San Siro the knock off shops all had Sydney FC shirts!]

Emile Heskey, a constant underachiever in his native England, joined Newcastle Jets and promptly began scoring tons of goals, proving once and for all the the quality of the A-League coaching is obviously higher than the Premier League. I’m kidding of course, it’s a tribute to mining magnate and Jets’ owner Nathan Tinkler who looked at Heskey and saw something valuable whereas everyone else saw a pile of inert materials.

and that’s all you need to know, I’ll be back Monday with an update on the weekend’s football news written hastily from Melbourne Airport departure lounge. [Doing gigs in Brisbane next week dannymcginlay.com for details!]

December 5th, 2011

The draw for the finals of Euro 2012 was revealed on Saturday morning Australian time. Inevitably the moniker “Group of Death” has been placed on Group C, with Current World & European Champions Spain, previous World Champions Italy, Croatia and Ireland. Group A has been dubbed the ‘easy’ group with Greece, Russia, Czech Republic and Poland. England fans are said to be very excited about going to Ukraine and rioting in towns they’ve not rioted in before

Any Australian wondering which team to support in Euro 2012 have a few options –
On a financial level the two countries that have invested the most in Australia are England [although that’s as part of the United Kingdom, it may be Wales doing most of the investing, I don’t care enough to properly research] and Netherlands.

Ethically, the corruptions perceptions list was released this week and the least corrupt country participating is Sweden. 2nd place is once again Netherlands.

For music lovers, Ireland should be the team of choice seeing as they have won the most Eurovision Song Contests. However this argument is null and void once you consider Brian McFadden.

On a purely superficial/objectifying level you can’t go past Ukraine. I’m not racist but… all Ukrainians are good looking. There I’ve said it. Complaints can be made in the comments section.

Back downunder and Sydney FC had the embarrassing task of playing their match against Brisbane Roar at a suburban rugby ground when the Sydney Football Stadium was booked for an Eminem concert. However this worked out in Sydney’s favour as they ended Brisbane’s unbeaten run with a 2-0 victory. The Sky Blues second goal was scored when Roar keeper Theoklitos forgot which sport he was playing and mistook a corner for a lineout. No really, look: [1.22 to go, apologies for not having a better link, if anyone has one let me know]
http://www.foxsports.com.au/football/a-league/sydney-fc-end-brisbane-roars-unbeaten-streak-with-comfortable-victory-at-win-jubilee-stadium/story-e6frf4gl-1226213551425

David Beckham’s LA Galaxy play a friendly against Melbourne Victory this Tuesday which has fans in a state of indifference. With tickets set at $50 minimum I predict this will be played in an empty stadium, giving Victory a taste of what it’s like for Melbourne Heart week in week out.

Rolling Stone Magazine has declared Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho “Rockstar of the Year”. Can’t argue, his post match interviews are preferable to listening to Katy Perry.
Goal of the week

November 28th, 2011

This week’s Football Bluff comes to you with a bit of a sore head. In the interests of transparency I should admit I am a Melbourne Victory fan, and in Europe my team is Celtic. This weekend I saw Victory win their first home match of the year (including Harry Kewell score his first goal), and combined with Celtic’s 5-0 demolition of St Mirren and Kilmarnock upsetting Rangers, there were a few beers had last night! However – onto the Bluff!

Interesting weekend in the EPL with six of the top eight teams dropping points. Alex Ferguson took his 1-1 draw with Newcastle in typical good grace, “It was an absolute travesty! I don’t think anyone in the ground apart from the assistant thought it was a penalty, but he then let the linesman overrule him! The problem is assistant referees are not full time, even if referees are. I could not understand the decision at all. It was a terrible decision, two years ago a decision like that cost us the league…” At this point the media backed away slowly and avoided eye contact. It is presumed that Ferguson is still on this tirade, Manchester United hopes he will have stopped in time for Wednesday’s Carling Cup clash with Crystal Palace.

American Samoa, the lowest ranked of the 204 members of FIFA, have won their first ever match defeating Tonga 2-1. This brings the Polynesian team’s goal difference in all matches to a much more respectable minus 272.

The Olyroos hopes of qualifying for London 2012 took a hit when they were held to a scoreless draw by Uzbekistan. Manager Aurelio Vidmar blamed a lack of finesse in front of goal, however the fact that the players were constantly stopping play to ask “No really, is soccer actually part of the Olympics now?” was more of a factor.

English/Nigerian winger Sone Aluko has broken new ground in the world of transfers. Aluko completed his transfer from Aberdeen to Rangers by paying his own transfer fee! The 22 year old forked out 150,000 pounds from his own pocket to help him make his dream move. In light of this cash-strapped Portsmouth have signed Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the Sultan of Brunei on the off chance they will make similar moves.

Goal of the week goes to Real Sociedad defender Inigo Martinez. Who has scored an amazing injury time winner from the half way line!

This is even more incredible due to the fact that this is the second time he’s done it this season! Martinez is famous in Spain for these sort of arsey goals, sadly the only time he’s done it at international level, he did it into his own goal!

November 14th, 2011

Australia suffered a major setback on the road to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, with a shock 1-0 defeat to Oman. The only thing more embarrassing for Australia’s football community was the pathetic effort by the nation’s sub-editors, not one major paper ran the headline O-MAN WE LOST! Tuesday presents a chance for redemption when the Socceroos take on Thailand, with fans expecting a “Thai-tanic Victory”.

In Europe the places for the 2012 Euro are close to being filled. Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine having already qualified, with Ireland, Croatia, Portugal and the Czech Republic looking most likely to make up the remaining spots. For the record the teams that have come dead last are Andorra and San Marino, or if you want to know which real country came last it was Malta. Stick that in your falcons!*

Reigning European and World Champions Spain were defeated by England in a friendly match at Wembley on Saturday night. Frank Lampard scored the winning goal with his face in the 49th minute. The English press have gone into meltdown, declaring that England are now favourites to win Euro 2012, the World Cup in 2014 and the next five Gold Logies.

In the A-League, the majority of clubs have suffered disappointing seasons so far. Adelaide, Perth, both Melbourne teams… pretty much everyone except Brisbane have frustrated their fans so far, leading to much bemoaning of the quality of the A-League. For a bit of perspective, please enjoy this comedy of errors from the Romanian league.

And at least our players are not as stupid as this – Aberdeen’s Darren Mackie was selected as a “Reading Champion” by a local school, only to admit in his opening statement that he doesn’t read books…
http://www.meldrum-pri.aberdeenshire.sch.uk/page47.html

Thanks to Stobes from Adelaide United’s red Army for the find. By the way he’s in a band called ‘Aaagh Cobras!’ their website is here:
http://www.reverbnation.com/aaaghcobras

Goal of the week – Kenny Miller

*Danny apologizes to any Maltese people offended by this comment and promises to donate money to a Maltese charity. Or buy a packet of Maltesers.