Search: 'Solomon Islands'

Alan Tomlinson looks at the avoidable mistakes, inherent problems and myriad challenges faced by the FA and its incoming chairman

“The highest parliament in English football… the mother of football parliaments,” football writer and former Cambridge Blue Geoffrey Green called the FA in 1959. And despite the power on the field of South American national sides and the legendary Real Madrid team, Green could also laud the FA as “an authority in every land”. 

Read more…

Australia may be getting a slightly easier ride to the World Cup by joining the Asian qualifying system, say Matthew Hall, but naturally, this one's all about money

Don’t get confused. Australia’s entry into the Asian Football Confederation is not about a fairer passage to the World Cup finals. Although taking part in a genuine qualifying campaign of up to 16 games, home and away (rather than beating American Samoa 31-0 then facing a rampant Uruguay in a play-off) is an excellent side dish, the main meal is about something a little more complicated: money.

Read more…

Derided in England, worshipped in Belgium, the much travelled injury-prone sweeper has a novel approach to being axed by Australia, as Matthew Hall writes

In late August, Paul Okon was telephoned by Aus­tralia coach Frank Farina and told he would not be called into a training camp the next month. Nor would he be in a 25-man squad for the 2005 Confederations Cup play-offs against the Solomon Islands in October.

Read more…

Double-figure drubbings are out (almost) and shocks are in. Matthew Hall reports on how the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu upset the odds in the South Pacific qualifiers

The cliche says that if it’s 31-0 then this must be the Oceania Football Confederation’s World Cup qual­ifying competition but, thankfully, OFC took heed of record-breaking scores four years ago. A three-phase tournament now saves teams such as American Samoa the embarrassment of massive drubbings against Australia – in 2001, the Samoans actually did watch 31 goals go past their goalkeeper.

Read more…

Dear WSC
I’ve heard some daft excuses for losing matches but Trevor Francis has surpassed even Manchester United’s grey shirts fiasco at Southampton with his moaning over Birmingham’s play-off penalty shoot-out at Preston. Perhaps the poor dear would like to consider the following points. At any ground other than Deepdale there would have been spectators behind both goals, and if the penalties hadn’t been at the Preston end they would have been at the Birmingham end.  Therefore, by his logic, that would be unfair on the Preston players. If Birmingham were a better team than Preston they would have finished above them in the league table, therefore the second leg of their play-off and the penalty shoot-out would have taken place at their own ground. They only finished fifth over 46 league games so they were lucky to have any chance of promotion in the first place. If his players are unnerved by taking penalties in front of opposition fans what chance would they stand of surviving in the Premiership? In a ground filled with paying spectators it makes sense for the deciding moments to take place at the end where most of them will have the best view. Who cares whether the referee or police changed their mind about which end the penalties should be taken? The notion that the whole match should be replayed because of that is absolutely ludicrous. If I was a Birmingham fan I would be embarrassed that the manager could come out with such a lame excuse for defeat instead of accepting that his team was simply not good enough.
Richard Watts, Sydenham 

Read more…