And another one. The Wellington Phoenix have doubled their tally of imports (excluding the established and hopefully imminently domesticated Roy Krishna) with the signing of Polish goalkeeper Filip Kurto.
Spare a drop of envy for Raphael Varane, who has already won four Champions Leagues and a World Cup and he’s only 25 years old. Some blokes have all the luck, aye…
Oh look, two more games, two more clean sheets and two more wins for Abby and the Courage. First off they pushed past Washington Spirit with a goal in each half, Debora first and then Jess McDonald, for a 2-0 win.
This team just looks like a World Cup winning team. It’s got star power and veteran leadership. Incredible young players that’ll help usher in the next era of international footy and a manager who had something big to prove.
Gareth Southgate’s English team stand out against those sides because of how refreshingly likeable they are. Who saw that coming, an endearing English team!?
Yeah okay then Ronnie, go ahead and try overshadowing the World Cup semi-final that you didn’t qualify for then. It didn’t work, mate. France vs Belgium was the be all and end all of football on this day. There’s no overshadowing the flippin’ World Cup, not even in Italy. Nice try but forget about it.
It all started with a like on Instagram. Not really, because by that time all the behind the scenes stuff had already been taken care of, but that was the first clue for the waiting public.
For the final time, Ali Riley strolled out in her FC Rosengård jerey. At home to Växjö in the last game before the Swedish league takes a break for a month, during which Ali officially joins Chelsea and will jump from midseason back to preseason over in England.
If the final four feels underwhelming then just go with it for the next week and see how you feel afterwards. Very few teams have ever won the World Cup by dominating from start to finish. Often teams start slow and build up while some just grind the whole way.
The Wellington Phoenix have a game in a few weeks. FFA Cup against Bentleigh Greens, a club from the Victorian Premier League, on August 7. Seems pretty early to be getting into the proper football and realistically it is.
Some people hate penalty shootouts. They think they’re too fickle or unfair. They think that penalty kicks don’t represent justice in a result after 120 minutes of stalemated football. Those people are wrong.
It wasn’t so long ago that the good old fashioned centre forward was all out of fashion. Spain was winning the World Cup and a couple Euros without one, Barcelona was winning everything at club level without one. But never fear because the 2018 World Cup has shown that the centre forward is making a comeback.
Just sneaking in under the deadline last week (an extended deadline thanks to these obscene World Cup kickoff times) was the breaking news that Ali Riley had agreed a transfer to Chelsea Football Club.
Andy Martin oversaw some very positive things in his time as CEO but there were simply too many clangers in there as well which has left the kiwi footy-loving public disillusioned with the state of NZ Football.
They were tactically awful in losing 1-0 to Mexico, needed a late screamer from Toni Kroos to beat Sweden 2-1 in injury time and then conceded twice at the appropriately-labelled death to lose 2-0 to South Korea.
Tommy Smith, Deklan Wynne and Mike Boxall all starting in the same game and spread out across the two defences… which murphy’s law dictated meant that there’d be a chuck of goals in this one.
And thus, people of the jury of public perception, I now present to you… the case for and against England as legitimate World Cup champion threats.
Having written pretty substantially about the exploits of NZ Football over the last few years, it was never likely that their press conference was going to offer any dramatic conclusions. Full credit to President Deryck Shaw and CEO Andy Martin for fronting up and answering some Qs but it’s not like they came armed with bombshells to drop.
Let’s see if we can get this all in proper order then. Andreas Heraf’s first tour in charge of the Football Ferns was in March where they played twice against Scotland (in Spain) and lost twice, both by 2-0 scorelines…
In the hour of darkness, in the time of need, that is when true heroes emerge. And it doesn’t get much darker than losing nine games in a row which was where the Colorado Rapids were at a week ago.