Everyone is having their s(pr)ay about the already notorious Thierry Henry incident. That his act was abominably unethical is undisputed; the more significant fallout from his brazen piece of gamesmanship is likely to be yet more discussion about the issue of video assistance for referees.
To clear the ground first: the calls for a replay of the match are essentially unfounded. Click to continue reading...

I escaped from my newborn this week just long enough to watch the final of FIFA's Under 17 World Cup in Nigeria. It was a game well worth watching.
World Soccer's Paul Gardner, a football purist who makes Craig Foster seem like an apostle of playing the percentages by comparison, has often written that the Under 17 event is his favourite tournament. Click to continue reading...

Lucinda Sue Salter, Lucy to her many friends, first stepped out onto the great football field of life at 6:56 this morning. Her daddy, otherwise known as the Football Tragic, was there to cut the cord and has been ministering to his wife for most of the day, in the midst of endless texts and calls from family and friends. Click to continue reading...

The acquisition of Kevin Sheedy as coach of the AFL's new western Sydney franchise has set plenty of tongues wagging, and keyboards clicking. The presence of one of the sport's most charismatic figures in enemy territory is good copy...especially for rugby league scribes defending the bastions.
Greg Prichard has given Penrith's Mark Geyer a free kick (or should that be a scrum feed? Click to continue reading...

Alex Brosque's return to form this season has been a delight to watch, but this sudden move up the ranks comes as a surprise nonetheless. The timing is unfortunate, since Brosque was surprisingly ineffective against Gold Coast United this weekend, especially after the game-changing departure of Steve Corica. Click to continue reading...

Has there been a better team goal in this season's A-League than Wellington's second against Newcastle last night (about two and a half minutes into this)? If Paul Ifill's surging run down the left was typically impressive, Costa Barbarouses' nonchalant flick was sublime. And Chris Greenacre's finish was no less classy. Click to continue reading...

There have been plenty of success stories at Sydney FC this season. The wonderful mobility of the Brosque-Bridge partnership, Stuart Musialik's return to form, the impressive fitness levels...not to mention the much-improved relations with the media, with Vitezslav Lavicka's courteous and dignified manner putting all four of his predecessors to shame. Click to continue reading...

Given all the glowing publicity surrounding the new Gold Coast United franchise early in the season, including a cloying puff piece on Channel 9's 60 Minutes, this makes particularly depressing reading.
Yes, stadium deals are tricky things. Sydney FC, for one, suffered from an onerous deal with the SFS (Aussie Stadium, as it then was) in the first A-League season, one which was largely responsible for the loss the club made in 2005/06. Click to continue reading...

No Moore. No Malcolm. No Tiatto. No Miller. It was always going to be a stringent test of Brisbane's resources.
And yet they acquitted themselves not too badly, on the whole. Although they were plainly outclassed in midfield for much of the game, and had every reason to let their heads drop after the injury to Reinaldo, they made a real fight of the game in the final twenty minutes, and perhaps deserved to equalise. Click to continue reading...

The alarming drop-off in A-League crowds was surely the main impetus behind these comments by Frank Lowy this week.
The A-League on free-to-air TV? A worthwhile aim, but wishful thinking at the moment. It is hard to see any of the commercial networks being willing to fit even a single game into their crowded weekend schedules, and coverage on the ABC or SBS would not bring in anything like sufficient revenue. Click to continue reading...

The Half-Time Heroes are back for October, and Con Stamocostas (who has assumed editorial duties in the enforced absence of Eamonn Flanagan) has compiled another meaty production. Shane Davis talks Dutch tactics, FourFourTwo's Ben O'Neil talks Germany, TWG's Stuart Randall talks EPL, and yours truly, as usual, talks rubbish. Click to continue reading...

This is one of the most hilarious goals of recent times, unless you're a Liverpool fan.
And, of course, by any standards of common sense it shouldn't have been a goal at all. (I just tested this on my wife, incidentally, who is conversant with the rules of the game and considered the awarding of the goal an outrage. Click to continue reading...

With Ange Postecoglou now installed as coach of the Brisbane Roar, all one can say is that the off-field ethos of the club will probably endure a shake-up.
Even before Frank Farina's encounter with the booze-bus, things had not been going swimmingly for the club in 2009/10, to put it mildly. Click to continue reading...

It was a dramatic World Cup qualifying day in South America, with Argentina scraping into the direct qualification places at the last gasp with a 1-0 away win over...Uruguay. The Charruas thus go into their third successive cross-confederation playoff, while Diego Maradona avoids the humiliation of being the first Albiceleste coach to fail to make the big event since 1970. Click to continue reading...

And so, once again, it was a case of Tim Cahill to the rescue.
The Socceroo performance wasn't quite as bad as their last outing against Oman, but there were long periods of the game where Australia were dreadfully uninspired. And, let us remember, Oman were denied what looked like a plain penalty a few minutes from the close. Click to continue reading...