In the second and final part of my chat with former Chicago Fire CEO, Peter Wilt we switch our attention to comparisons between the A-League and the MLS and look at the possibility of Wilt making his way down under. You can read it all here on Australian FourFourTwo.
To label the A-League off season interminable is somewhat of an understatement but never fear we are only days away from the action kicking off. In light of that I finally got around to writing a season preview for The Elastico, the first part part of which you can read here. All I can say is that I’m glad I left Newcastle for the second part.
If you remember just over year ago I shared my burgeoning obsession of trying to complete my 2011 World Cup sticker book. At the time I did think why I hadn’t the A-League got around to doing something similar. Well almost a year on I finally got around to writing something about it for my latest effort for Australian FourFourTwo.
Saturday night’s game will certainly go down as one of the most exciting games we have seen so far in the short history of the A-League. And that’s just on the quality of the goals alone with five of the six scored being absolute crackers.
But the game was also the story of how Melbourne’s makeshift central pairing was unable to deal with the combined presence of van Djik and the slippery fish, Henrique. Matthew Kemp is probably one of the best right backs going around but as a central defender he looks a lot less assured.
Merrick’s other gamble of playing Nick Ward as Kemp’s replacement also didn’t work. And much like Fred’s exploitation of Greg Owens in the 2006/07 Grand Final, Henrique was too much of a handful for Henrique and left Kemp exposed too many times for everyone’s liking. From what we saw on Saturday night, Surat Sukha needs to be given a starting spot and a proper central defender is needed to shore up the currently leaky defence.
One person that seemed to be copping a lot from the crowd, was former Wellington Phoenix custodian, Glenn Moss, with the Victory faithful seeming to blame him for all our goals. This is extremely poor form by large sections of the crowd and in my latest blog 442 post I take them to task.
Carlos Hernandez, what else is there to say apart from - “We have been two years for you to score from a free kick!”
First home game of the season last time around saw me get dressed up for the occasion. That time around we put five goals past Newcastle and set the scene for what was the most part a pretty successful season. So with tonight’s opening game of the A-League season being also Melbourne’s first home game I thought I would continue the theme for the start of this season. Hopefully we will get a similar result. This season will also see myself become more of an active supporter, so if you see a smartly dressed young man in the southern end tonight, come over and say hello.
Tip for tonight: Melbourne 2 Central Coast 0
Watching the A-League on TV when Andy Harper and Michael Cockerill are commentating is like having your teeth pulled. They simple don’t shut up. I think someone needs to point out to them that television is visual medium and we don’t necessarily need to have commentary 100% of the time. Most of the time both their commentary is pure dribble and more often than not they take the opportunity to mention Sydney FC, even when they aren’t even playing. I think this post by The Fisherman’s Friend sums them up perfectly.
