There’s no easy fix when an international team is struggling for results. You can sack the manager but that often isn’t the solution it initially appears to be. And unlike club teams they’re not together on the training paddock throughout the weeks…
It’s preseason for most right now, and offseason for many, but for Sligo Rovers this past week brought around the biggest match of their season so far as they travelled to Wales to take on Bala Town in their first leg Europa Conference League qualifier
It has been exactly three weeks since the dream of watching an All Whites team at the 2022 FIFA World Cup was shattered over ninety minutes of enticed agony. One single game to decide the final qualifier for the tournament
Max Mata supplied the feed in Sligo Rovers’ latest, don’t you even worry about that. It was a 3-1 win over Shelbourne and he served up a goal and an assist and each of them were gorgeous instances of footballing activities
Where are the goals going to come from? After 180 minutes of goalless action in this international window the same old question remains and we’re not much closer to answering it.
These are the slim pickings weeks of Flying Kiwis when offseasons and international windows cause interruptions and yet here we are anyway with yarns still to be told. Once upon a time the column used to take a break around now. Those were in the old days
This Ferns tour is one of awkward timing. A couple games in Europe at a time when many players have been out of season for a couple of weeks and there aren’t a heap of others to make up the difference
The back half of last season made it clear that the Welly Nix were going to need to do some clever business in the transfer market in order to get them over the whole ‘winning a finals game’ hump
Back at it straight out of All Whites duty and for Logan Rogerson was immediately on the scoresheet, channelling that World Cup frustration into a tidy first-time finish for FC Haka
The mission for the Football Ferns is as simple as playing as many games as possible, ideally against teams of a similar and competitive standard, giving themselves maximum room for growth before the World Cup next year
Our wills and fates do so contrary run, as a clever chap once wrote. The All Whites went to Doha and they proved that they were good enough to qualify for the 2022 FIFA World Cup but it just wasn’t to be
Big yarns boiling in the Flying Kiwis Transfer Season pot as Sarpreet Singh was, according to reports in Germany, on the brink of a permanent move to Werder Bremen…
The warm-ups are over, the dress rehearsals complete, all that remains now is the main event. You know, the ninety minutes that’ll decide the final qualifier for the 2022 FIFA World Cup
Even more than a regular friendly match, this one was all about preparation. For both teams in fact because while All Whites were obviously preparing for their World Cup qualifying playoff against Costa Rica nine days after this match, Peru were also amassing their forces ahead of an intercontinental game
The All Whites in camp while many European seasons have come to an end recently plus the international window is affecting others that are still ongoing... and yet the abundance of Flying Kiwis goodness means there’s still enough going on to keep churning out the yarns
We’re talking about five goals in 14 MLS games. Two clear of the next best Timbers player (which, to be fair, reflects as badly on their wider attacking group as it does positively on Tuiloma). He also scored one in preseason which doesn’t technically count but it’s still good for illustrating the point
The Ghirls may have finished 17 points off Rangers in first place in the SWPL and they may have finished 10 points back from Glasgow City in second, missing out on the Champions League qualifiers, but they beat City in the SWPL Cup final and they’ve beaten City in the Scottish Cup final
The first few weeks of the offseason always go hard. You’re still coming to terms with the end of the previous term, especially if it ended in an abrupt playoff defeat, and all of a sudden it’s announcement after announcement of housekeeping squad chat
It’s now only a matter of weeks until the biggest game of football that the Aotearoa men’s national team has played for at least four and a half years. Probably more like twelve years given that this particular intercontinental playoff feels a whole lot more plausibly winnable than the previous two
Say would you look at that? Bill Tuiloma scored another goal. That’s already his fourth of the season and having also bagged one last week it meant he’d scored in consecutive MLS games for the first time in his career