The World Cup is nearing ever closer and the Football Ferns have work to do. A shocker of a series against Portugal and Argentina in February caught them off-guard and now the pressure is on with those co-hosting duties on the horizon.
Nothing quite like the sounds of a busy stadium on the opening day of the season. The pitch is in pristine condition. Fans of both teams are hopeful with the fresh start.
All we really needed from these All Whites vs China games was to see these players live in Aotearoa again and for them to score a goal or two. Ideally with a couple of wins. We didn’t get all of that at Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland on Thursday night but we did manage to tick all the boxes at Sky Stadium in Wellington three days later.
While the rest of us are wondering if we can still squeeze a weekend away into the calendar to make up for the wettest summer on record, top flight regional leagues around the country are kicking off this weekend
When this season began there was no reason to be watching the Dutch second tier. Now there are two reasons: Ryan Thomas at PEC Zwolle and Matt Garbett at NAC Breda. And on a Friday night in the Netherlands the two of them went head to head
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.