Nothing ever stays the same for long in kiwi football but this past week in particular has been a real doozy. A-League expansion speculation has got everyone talking but more immediately relevant is that the Women’s National League has gotten a revamp
We’ve reached that frisky point in the A-League where this season and next season begin to overlap. The finals are edging ever closer with most teams only having six games left
PEC Zwolle had a Friday night game against Willem II and inside a dozen minutes we had this sweet bit of movement from Thommo followed by that deliciously direct angled run and then the mean little cut-back. Bang. Haris Medunjanin put Zwolle into the lead.
It’s been a while since we last saw the All Whites in action, not since September have the lads graced a football pitch together. That was at Eden Park and they lost 2-0 to Australia in Winston Reid’s final international appearance
These days don’t come around very often. We’re talking about an FA Cup fifth round fixture against a Premier League opponent. The magic of the cup in essence. Southampton versus Grimsby Town. What an occasion.
You know, the funny thing is the Football Ferns actually didn’t play that badly against Portugal in the first half. Hard to imagine how drastically that was all going to change.
They did at least get better with each game. But the bottom line was that the Football Ferns had three games against seemingly competitive teams and yet the same problems still persisted.
After each making the LOI Team of the Week in round one, both Max Mata and Nando Pijnaker sought to continue that early form away to UCD in the second game of the term
It’s the Woodsman! 84th minute against the defending champs, popping up at the far post for a gentle tap-in that was celebrated all throughout Nottingham and perhaps even more so in North London
There’s not a football club on the planet that doesn’t know the value of being able to produce their own players. Not all of them bother with it, particularly those who can afford to bypass such long-term visions, but they all understand why it matters
The Ferns are competitive against teams of a similar stature. Proven fact. We just don’t play those teams often enough for the casual fans out there to notice, perhaps.
Sarpreet Singh was on pace to potentially lead the entire German second tier in assists at the halfway stage of last season... then he got injured and that dream fizzed out
Chris Wood joined Newcastle at a pivotal moment: the first transfer window after their Saudi takeover when the club was lingering down in the relegation zone and needed a quick fix.
Big cheers to the officious referees of Serie A for ensuring that Fabiano Parisi has already picked up five yellow cards this season, leading to a one-game suspension that gave Liberato Cacace a free run at the starting left back spot for the game against Torino
Not since Amber Hearn, the Football Ferns record goal-scorer, have we seen a number nine as pure as Clegg come through. And perhaps not even then.
It all happened so quickly. Last week Chris Wood was doing his typical thing as a late sub for Newcastle, this week he’s a newly minted Nottingham Forest player
It’s interesting that after the first Footy Ferns game against the USA both Jitka Klimková and Ali Riley seemed to make a deliberate point, as if it had been weighing on their minds, of defending the fact that this series even happened at all
You’d have been forgiven for turning the telly off fifteen minutes into the latest WahiNix fixture as Perth’s Susan Phonsongkham slotted home her penalty kick to make it 2-0 to the Glory bright and early
One important thing to know about Ben Waine: the lad is clinical. Across his A-League career he scored 17 goals from only 75 total shots, adding up to a goals-to-shot ratio of 23%
It’s kinda strange that this tour is even happening. It’s not a FIFA window and therefore the Football Ferns have their hands tied as to which players they can select however the USA team wants a dummy run through some Aotearoa facilities ahead of the World Cup