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.

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March 25th, 2013

In the A-League it’s all boiling down to the final week to see who will be in the finals. At time of writing Western Sydney Wanderers, Central Coast Mariners, Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United are all locked into the top four spots, but the final two spots could go to Brisbane, Sydney, Perth or Newcastle. The big question remains – with AFL starting next week will the A-League get any media coverage? People are doubtful but if the FFA goes with my idea of a releasing an Emu in a woollen hat mid match, we may get on Sports Tonight’s play of the day.

All week World Cup Qualifiers have been played out all over the globe. Australia play traditional rivals Oman tomorrow night in Sydney of course, but what about the results you may have missed?
The most emotionally charged match of the weekend was definitely Croatia v Serbia, the first match between the two nations since the Balkan War. Flares were lit, fans clashed, arrests were made, all impressive considering no away fans were allowed into the ground. Serbia have promised the return leg will be just as firey. With all the emotion no one really noticed that Croatia won 2-0.

The emotions were just as intense at the clash of Azerbaijan v Luxembourg. Although this was not due to past political tensions but the results of the 2011 Eurovision song Contest. The post match dance off ended with five people being arrested for jazz hands related crimes.

Colombia smashed Bolivia 5-0. Which made the drug lords happy, then on edge, then tired, then angry, then horny, then listless, then STOP LOOKING AT ME!

In both footballing and financial bailout terms, Cyprus and Switzerland played out a 0-0 draw.

New Zealand saw off a plucky New Caledonia which ended with Shane Smeltz getting kicked in the face. Melbourne Victory’s assistant coach Kevin Muscat called it “The greatest moment in football history”

Paraguay and Uruguay played out an entertaining 1-1 draw to a sell out crowd, who by all accounts had a Guay Old Time! [I’m really sorry…I’ll stop now]

Goal of the Week –