Christmas Break

Well it’s the Christmas break for Australian football and with the League winners confirmed as Melbourne with their 4-0 Victory (excuse the pun) over the playing-wise and financially dire New Zealand Knights, the attention now turns to the race for the remaining finals spots as well as the Asian frontier that Sydney and Adelaide are now preparing to enter.

Many ‘experts’ within the media are writing off both Perth and Queensland for a finals berth but the chance is still there for them all. Only 6 points separates 3^rd place from 7^th place which tells me that anyone in there is still in with a chance to make the finals and I am not prepared to stick my neck out yet and call who the top 4 will be.

The real interest for me over the last few weeks has been Asia. Both the Asian Cup and Asian Champions League draws were made last week with results that I think are both great for football and exciting. The Asian Cup sees the Socceroos drawn into Group A alongside co-host Thailand, Iraq and Oman. With who I believe to be our biggest threat within the tournament Japan being drawn into Group B, we need to win our group to try to avoid playing the Group B winners in the Quarter Finals.

I do however agree with Craig Foster in thinking that Graham Arnold should consider anything less than winning the tournament a failure. Don’t lower our expectations Arnie, if you don’t win the tournament, you most definitely will be replaced as coach…. You should be replaced even if we win…. But moving on…

As for the regions club tournament, the Asian Champions League, I think that the contrasting hard draws that Sydney and Adelaide have been handed will be a positive. I was worried that we would be seeing Sydney vs the Uzbekistani or some other obscure minnow facing at Aussie Stadium on a Wednesday night in front of a less than 9000 crowd with the majority of the city registering a care factor or zero! Sydney however drew a dream draw for me, being placed in Group E alongside Japanese champions and the biggest drawcard in the tournament, Uruwa Red Diamonds, Chinese runners up Shanghai Shenhua and the Indonesian champions Persik Kediri.

Adelaide were just as lucky… or unlucky depending on how you choose to look at it, in being placed in Group G with similarly tough opponents. They will face Korean Champions Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma, Chinese league and cup champions Shandong Luneng and Vietnamese champions Dong Tam Long An. They should have similarly no problems in selling out Hindmarsh for their matches.

Football in this country just keeps getting better and better and this new Asian frontier is no exception. Bring it on!

DANE