Well I must say I was a little surprised when Ben Buckley called last night to offer me the job of Socceroos' Head Coach, starting immediately.
Of course I know when the time for my national duty has come, and I accepted. But not before I had a long talk with Buckley in which I said I would be making a number of changes, some of them which will shock some people and many fans, and he guaranteed that I would have complete freedom and control over the roster.

It is anxious times for a Brisbane Roar fan. I mean hell, the undefeated streak stretches to 34 games. But it's hard not to notice that the last two games have presented a new challenge. It's hard not to notice that we have not scored from open play in the last two games.
In week one, Central Coast tried to handle us the way they almost did last season, with their half-open, counter attacking game, but once again, came up short.

When I began this blog over five years ago I honestly thought there were no active A-League blogs. I soon discovered I was wrong and wrote a reasonably comprehensive review of the amateur blogs which focused on the A-League at that time.
One of the things I was hungry for from the beginning was high quality, football-knowledgeable analysis of the games.

The above quote is lifted from the Rangers fan forum and is not referring to Matty actually but to Thomas Broich and Mitch Nichols, who they merrily discuss their club's prospects of poaching, given what they see as the bargain purchase of Matty.
The page about Matty, which begins when the first talk of the transfer emerged, goes for 50 pages.

The other week I listed ten reasons why it is brilliant to be a Brisbane Roar fan right now. Here's another one: the media about our team is endless, and pretty much all flattering. Here's just a few of the headlines from the last few days:
Possession statistics compare A-League's Brisbane Roar to La Liga and European champions Barcelona
Brisbane, That Was Football Porn
Who Can Stop Brisbane Roar
The Roar Effect
Brisbane Roar are a Gift for the A-League
That really is only a few, and they're not by Roar partisans.

7:1 win vs Adelaide last night. Oh yes oh yes oh yes. Ra ra ra. We actually are the best in the World and everyone else is, slowly but surely, learning to live with it.
The question being repeated everywhere is, how come only eleven and a half thousand people saw one of the greatest football spectacles we might expect to see in club football?

I might have to be writing a bit this season. Things are exciting at the Roar and I am full of material. If anything I've been suffering the writer's block of someone with far too much to say. So fuck it, I'll start with a rave. Anything to get the gripes with FIFA (which I still have) from the top of the page and some news of this brilliant team.

This blog is at heart about my love affair with soccer, an affair that is unwavering after five or six years. From very early on I became aware of the corruption that has been in our game and that is in our game at a high level. I was more properly informed about it after reading Andrew Jennings' book, Foul!

The last time I wrote about the A-League or the Brisbane Roar was April last year. The short of what I had to say then was, "the Brisbane Roar cannot repeat its original seduction of this consumer. This time they're going to have to realise a product that is worth it for me to seek out."
They have done it.

I've spent the last several days mostly at home vigorously failing to write down any of my many thoughts. South Africa is unfinished business for me. I know that much. My blogging was not up to my intentions of course, but stands as a sort of series of photographs, incomplete and some blurry, but nevertheless captured memories.

This is as close as I got to the Grand Final. The photo was taken by Jacob actually, and we had split up a minibus ride ago, but Jacob had a ticket. I was wandering the periphery, a shag on a seething rock, practically illegal, knowing there was no fan zone anywhere.
The reason I was there at all is because I was trying to keep up with Keith and Kate, Total Sports Employees, who also weren't going to the game.

Four are left, three beautiful Europeans and a gutsy outsider South American.
Apart from just watching some brilliant teams play do-or-die soccer, the significance of day two of the Quarter Finals was that Jacob and I got to find out who would be the teams we will see live in Durban on the 7th.

Netherlands v Brazil 2:1
Now regular readers of my writings are accustomed to incisive, educated analysis and poignant, accurate predictions, so I will not disappoint.
It was the M&Ms and, the Nike curse.
The M&Ms, you may remember, were very clear: the Finals, at which my son will be present, will be a Spanish victory over the Netherlands.

Book Review
Chuck Korr and Marvin Close, More than Just a Game: Football v Apartheid, Collins, London, 2008.

Most people are familiar with the famous line by one of those Pommy Soccernumaries, "Some people say that football is a matter of life and death.

According to Harry Kewell, the Refs Favour Big Guns. I don't think it's Harry Kewell's place to say it actually, but he's broadly correct, and backs up my own and many others' observations.
Actually Harry Kewell is looking to me more and more like a poor man's Cristiano Ronaldo - brilliant, but a mummy's boy, a cheat and a whinger.