Several of the U.S. and Australian players are friends, including of course the USA's Tim Howard and Socceroo Tim Cahill, who play together at Everton. They chatted before the match (below) and after the game Howard commented on his club teammate scoring on him.
"It was a poacher's goal and the fact that he (finished it) made it even more humorous because those are the only kind of goals he gets," said Howard with a smile.

Now we truly have God, an Aussie God, coming to Sydney to the A-League.
Not good enough for the Socceroos, not yet anyway, but Nicky in Sydney. Makes you want to dance.
Boca Juniors to Melbourne, Everton to everywhere, Heart are here, Skoko is back, Fowler fires up Perth, Adelaide reborn with Flores, and now Nicky.

It's time for that annual tradition that is reviewing the MLSPU salary release to comment on the worst of United's current bunch of overpaid geriatrics and medical cases.
Leading the list:
Troy Perkins (2.13 GAA, 66 SV%) $205k
Remember, not only does this take into account his $205k of guaranteed money, but it also includes the fact that United panic-traded both Fred and the 2010 1st round draft pick for him.

The competition hots up now with the knock-out stages and there will be no second chances. Here's the way I see the second Round panning out.

URUGUAY v SOUTH KOREA

Uruguay should have to much firepower for the Korean's, with Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez spearheading their attack.

Adelaide United, Newcastle Jets and Melbourne Heart were the big winners on the weekend.
A classic John Aloisi miss, was matched by a classic Aloisi goal in the Heart Phoenix match.
Good football for the watching TV viewers inspired by the very tall Gerard Sibon, Rugter Worm and Josip Skoko.

With the new season comes an influx of new signings and they're learning right from the get go what an unforgiving league the ISL can be.
PSM's new Aussie imports, Goran Subara and Mitrovic, both picked up yellows during their narrow 1-0 victory away to Persibo. And as mentioned before Persijap's Portuguese coach Divaldo Alves is struggling to win the fans over after one draw and one defeat in their opening home games.

The Young Socceroos went down to a goalkeeping blunder in the final minutes of their Asian Cup Final last night.
Mark Birighetti dropped a simple cross and Korea DPR prodded home to win the final 3-2.
But there was an awful lot to like about this young Australian side.
Tommy Oar showed some real class, and excitement with his dribbling and crossing creating two goals for Kerum Bulut himself turning in a wonderful centre-forward display.

Goodison Park – A good place to gain points on the rivals

Arsenal picked up two points on United who'd thrown away a 2 goal lead in stoppage time to draw away at Everton. Arsenal almost did the same but almost doesn't cut it. After all, we've almost won many titles!

Three points at a difficult venue just add to the phenomenal away record that Arsenal are developing this season (if only we can do better at home one might whisper).

Click here to read an article by Ray Gatt from 'The Australian' about Thai Port coach Nathan Hall. In the interview, the 25 year old Aussie has words of praise for Sasom Pobpraserd and Steve Darby, as well as giving us an insight into his future ambitions.
www.thaiportfc/blogspot.

A Scott McDonald goal gave Celtic a brief lead in the Old Firm clash with Rangers before Lee McCullough equalized within two minutes. It was a typically nervy affair as Celtic and Rangers did battle at Parkhead and there were the usual flurry of cautions at Celtic Park before Aussie McDonald struck late on before Rangers kept themselves well ahead of their arch rivals with their immediate response.

As promised, an update to my list of teams that I follow. I've done previous posts about the Colorado Rapids, Queen of the South, Blackburn Rovers, and CD Tenerife. As well as the now defunct Kildare County and my brief following of My FC team Ebbsfleet United. This time we're heading to the land Down Under for the Melbourne Victory of the Australian A-League.

Ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to the newest member of the Black-and-Red, Mr. Danny Allsopp. The Aussie forward was nice enough to take a few minutes out of his morning to chat with us about his excitement in coming to DC, playing in England, the similarities between MLS and Australia's A-League and the importance of tradition in football.

Gordon Strachan raided Celtic for the last time yesterday as he convinced Scott McDonald to leave Celtic Park for the Riverside. Last week I did a similar post about the credentials of Stephen McManus and received a very good report about him from the excellent Celtic fans, which will be published later this week.

Scott McDonald scored his first goal in a Middlesbrough shirt on Saturday and after coming through the match unscathed will be hoping to add to his tally in tonight's game at Derby.

The Australian international was a live-wire against Newcastle in the Tees-Tyne derby and threatened throughout with his pace and use of the ball.

Victoria Beckham graces next month's cover of Maire Claire Australia in grand, Balmain fashion. Except, it's something we've seen before. The April Aussie cover uses a shot "borrowed" from the U.S. Elle photo shoot she did back in 2009. How dry.

What's more this ain't the first time Mrs.

Wellington lost 4-2 to Sydney in the A-League semi final in front of 13,000 fans at the SFS.
As many have suspected Wellington's finals were played at home the last two weeks, and despite their equalizer to make it 1-1 and a dubious hand of payne goal for Sydney to ease back into the lead, the Nix were never in this.

Salary Cap approaches $5 million for cashed up clubs! (Can't find one under my bed)
More money for another Marquee announces the FFA. Fantastic but hasn't someone told them the Fury, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Phoenix, Adelaide, Sydney and more are all in some sort of financial woe.
Make that basket cases!

Everton announced today that the club will be embarking on a preseason tour to Australia this summer in what will be their first visit since 1987.

The Toffees will play three games down under against A-League sides. Obviously, the tour will be extremely popular for Everton because of the popularity of Aussie and Everton hero Tim Cahill.

You gotta love them fair dinkum Aussies. Their boundless optimism before going into any sporting fixture has to be seen to be believed. And when the result doesn't work out as they predicted...well just look at what the Sydney coach said before and after their Asian Champions League game against Persik back in 2007.

Another year. Another transfer window. Another scattergun approach from the media.
Desperate to break the story first the press have obviously decided to throw enough transfer tittle tattle onto their back pages with the hope that one will stick, so when the player does make the move they can look all smug.

Tim Brown, the combative All Whites midfielder, has arrived back in Auckland today after his colleagues departed for Austria in preparation for the World Cup. Brown suffered a fractured shoulder during the 2-1 defeat to Australia on Monday, after a fairly innocuous challenge from Aussie Vince Grella sent him crashing to the ground .

Denmark have been preparing for the World Cup in South Africa in recent weeks, they've already played to warm up games. The first one was against Senegal which resulted in a 2-0 win for the Dane's, then a freindly against the fierce Aussie's which resulted in a dissapointing 0-1 loss.

Nicklas Bendtner didn't feature in these games, as he is still recovering from a thigh problem and slight flu .

Aussie's ties to the 2010 World Cup are deeper than Socceroos experience

In case you have been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, the 2010 World Cup has been turned on its head by startling injury news coming out of yesterday's action in South Africa.

Aussie's ties to the 2010 World Cup are deeper than Socceroos experience The Aussie forward talks about his time in the EPL and encounters with some of the Three Lions.

In case you have been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, the 2010 World Cup has been turned on its head by startling injury news coming out of yesterday's action in South Africa.

Time for intellectual discussion to be set aside.
Go the bloody Aussies; and Bfwana Bfwana. Got a great feeling from the Street Parade in South Africa yesterday...
so did some other Aussie, as when I woke up this morning someone had knicked my flag off my car....but I have two more so don't panick.

No arguments about who is the "underdog" here

On paper (and if you look at the odds on any betting website), this match should be a one-sided affair.

And the Germans appear all to keen to remind their Australian counterparts of this fact. None more so than the usually quietly spoken coach Joachim Löw.

Germany 4
Australia 0

Germany strolled to victory over ten man Australia to instill ominous fear to the rest of the world. A thundering strike by Lukas Podolski after ten minutes, flew past Mark Schwarzer who didn't have a prayer stopping the powerful drive that went right through his laces.

In a sentence
Germany thrash Australia with the tournament's first "contender' performance.

Familiarity over class
Based on their domestic records, Klose and Podolski should not form a prolific pair. Yet the level of understanding leads to fine link-up play.

It's Australia, it's the World Cup.
Who will get sent off? What formation will Richard Garcia start in? Where's Harry, where's Mike, Has Fozzie got his way and sacked Pim, or has he backed down, are the former Captains picking the team, who will the Aussie media hit next, and yes we've got our Aussie scarves on when we do the show, just like Mr Neutral, Les Murray.

Serbia had their destiny in their own hands. After losing 1-0 to Ghana in the opening game they bounced back against Germany with a 1-0 win, so it set it up nicely when they came up against the Group D basement boys Australia.

And when the Germans took a deserved lead against Ghana, all Serbia needed to do was tie their own game up and they would be heading into the round of 16.

Two big transfer stories today:

One is that a couple of sources are reporting that Arsenal have renewed their interest in Fulham/Australia keeper Mark Schwarzer. The 37 year-old Aussie would reportedly cost in the 3.5 million range. Who knows if this is true or not this could just be a well-executed, quite funny, meta joke perpetrated by the media.

We now know who has qualified from the Group stages of the 2010 World Cup, and there has been some surprise, some nail-biting final games and yes we have had some pretty boring games to go with it but that's World Cup soccer for you. However now the excitement really begins as we enter the knock out stages of the tournament with no second chances to be had.

Arsenal are closing in on Fulham 'keeper Mark Schwarzer after the Cottagers opened talks with Hull over bringing in Boaz Myhill as a replacement.

Gunners boss Arsene Wenger wants a new first-choice goalkeeper and sees the 37-year-old former Middlesbrough shot-stopper as the ideal replacement for the shaky Manuel Almunia.

1. We south east asians(SEA) were late before to close up gaps with Asian giants or even some moderate asian teams,but lately we have seen improvements over the past 2-3 years that teams like Thailand,Singapore,Vietnam,Indonesia etc have step the gas to actually bring ourselves closer to the big boys.

AEK arrived in Sydney at 8pm local time.By the time the players had cleared customs it was another hour.About 200 AEK fans were on hand to greet the team,the Original boys from Melbourne joined their Sydney brothers and with others coming from all over Australia.The players looked very tired after their 20 hour flight but with the singing from the fans,the boys were made to feel very welcome.

Middlesbrough number 1, Brad Jones is likely to complete a move to Premier League giants Liverpool in the next 24 hours after the two clubs agreed a fee in the region of £2.5million. A previous offer of £2million from the Merseyside outfit was rebuffed by us but it is believed that Roy Hodgson has been given permission to increase the offer for the Australian number 2.

Just a quickie.. but Joe Hart will not be displaced as the City number 1, especially after his barnstorming display at Spuds today.

Given will be not be a Number 2 for anybody.

City will not sell Shay Given to any team that directly competes with them in the league, therefore..

Middlesborough have announced the sale of their keeper Brad Jones to Liverpool for a fee of £2.3 million.
The Aussie-born player who qualifies as a 'English' player because he has been at 'Boro for ten years, making 57 appearances.
He will act as under-study to Pepe Reina, while Diego Cavalieri is now expected to return to football in Europe.

This is getting silly! And who better than me to contribute when things are silly!
Robbie keeps writing and talking about the Harry thing. Boring Robbie.
Harry, in between dazzling runs, keeps replying. Boring Harry but keep up the dazzling runs.
Bernie Mandic, what is he on! Does Harry really need a minder to speak for him, he seemed to speak for himself quite well on Fox the other night.

Sorry for the lack of posting recently only I was 'kidnapped' by the missus and taken hostage on the sunny isle of Lanzarote for two weeks.
It was horrible. All that boozing, eating and all those late-night activities.
I'd much rather have been in rainy England......
Anyway I'm back now and pissed off.