Ibrahimovic is 6ft 5. You might be surprised at how tall the players are these days. Shortarse Ronaldo is 6ft 1
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Socceroos
- Thread starter Tigerfan
- Start date
You're comparing a person who kicked 1,000 goals v someone who played about 140 Bundesliga games. If you wanna compare apples with apples, compare him with Cristiano Ronaldo.
As I said, very few. Ibrahimovic is a freak, hardly the prototype of what makes it in the game. He is unbelievably good (almost as good as he is arrogant haha)
Regarding talent pool. Outside of blokes who went on to be elite Australian Rules players. The two rugby codes take up a pretty big chunk of the athletic talent pool in NSW and QLD. Some of the smaller, stocky players would have provided some pretty decent talent in a historical sliding doors moment that the two rugby codes never existed in Australia. The types of blokes playing half back in league for instance, or scrum half in Union.
And it doesn't necessarily need to be specific examples of, Gary Abblett Jnr, or Brett Deledio, or Buddy Franklin, or Peter Stirling, or George Greagan would have been the best socceroos ever. It's not as absolute as that.
If you had that greater pool of athletic talent involved in soccer (instead of largely domestic codes), it creates an intensively hard fought, competitive, deep talent pool, raising the overall culture and standard of the game. That then creates really good international level players filtering to the top of that pile. In that sliding doors hypothetical, you might have had blokes who never actually made the top level of the rugby codes or Aussie rules, not due to skill defects, but due to their body breaking down from the contact element of elite level high contact sports. In a sliding door moment that these higher contact football codes weren't around, there could be a whole host of these blokes, that never became household names in the two ruby codes or Aussie rules, choosing to play soccer instead at a young age. And finding a niche they never found in this life. Pushed on by the deeper, more competitive talent pool.
And it doesn't necessarily need to be specific examples of, Gary Abblett Jnr, or Brett Deledio, or Buddy Franklin, or Peter Stirling, or George Greagan would have been the best socceroos ever. It's not as absolute as that.
If you had that greater pool of athletic talent involved in soccer (instead of largely domestic codes), it creates an intensively hard fought, competitive, deep talent pool, raising the overall culture and standard of the game. That then creates really good international level players filtering to the top of that pile. In that sliding doors hypothetical, you might have had blokes who never actually made the top level of the rugby codes or Aussie rules, not due to skill defects, but due to their body breaking down from the contact element of elite level high contact sports. In a sliding door moment that these higher contact football codes weren't around, there could be a whole host of these blokes, that never became household names in the two ruby codes or Aussie rules, choosing to play soccer instead at a young age. And finding a niche they never found in this life. Pushed on by the deeper, more competitive talent pool.
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yeah forgot about that. Good that it could be either the Welsh or the Scots in though!
Canada through to the World Cup for the first time since 1986. Shame they have to make their long awaited return in Qatar’s nothing cup.
When the extent of the bid corruption was uncovered. Sacking people wasn’t enough. Qatar should have been stripped and the cup awarded to the second placed bid, which was in actual fact by far the most solid bid. And that was the US bid.
It would have been great for Canada, playing in front of virtual home crowds if their matches were scheduled strategically in cities close to the Canadian border. Plus it’s looking likely the US and Mexico will also qualify. Really would have been some type of spectacle with all those stars aligning.
When the extent of the bid corruption was uncovered. Sacking people wasn’t enough. Qatar should have been stripped and the cup awarded to the second placed bid, which was in actual fact by far the most solid bid. And that was the US bid.
It would have been great for Canada, playing in front of virtual home crowds if their matches were scheduled strategically in cities close to the Canadian border. Plus it’s looking likely the US and Mexico will also qualify. Really would have been some type of spectacle with all those stars aligning.
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I have no doubt that when the World Cup is on, very few people will care about how Qatar got the hosting rights. It's the biggest sporting event in the World and will still be watched and enjoyed by billions.
Blind Freddy could see how bizarre a bid it was. I mean Qatar FFS? A sandy desert peninsula that really only has one city. So you have one host city and a few Bedouin nomadic host villages, with stadiums built over the bones of the Bangladeshi and Pakastani indentured labour, in the middle of the desert. Perhaps it could have been jointly hosted by Qatar and the UAE to at least make it look a bit genuine, with actual host cities. From a logistical point of view you would be tempted to say Saudi Arabia as a joint host, given they have a genuine history in the game, But clearly you couldn't do it, due to political reasoning. That said, FIFA seem pretty malleable, depending on who's paying the most under the table.
May as well have the Pilbara put in a bid in it's own right next. The atmosphere and conditions wouldn't be much different.
Regarding the US. They have so many existing stadiums to choose from - both professional and college stadiums. They would theoretically be ready to host if Qatar was stripped now and the US only had months to prepare. It really was by far the best bid.
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Leckie/Butler is a good analogy.
Plenty of Leckie like players have played for Australia and played in the top leagues over Europe. They aren’t all magical maestros with the ball. As you suggest if the elite players in AFL with elite game sense and athletic traits had focused on sokkah from an early age we would have a better national team and more players in elite competitions around the world.
If it wasn't for FIFA's inner workings we would never have moved from Oceania to the Asian Confederation. That move was a massive boost for soccer in Australia.
I'm actually of the belief that Oceania should have been disbanded and absorbed into Asia. It becomes an Asia-Pacific Confederation.
Asia then plays in two conferences (or sub confederations) for qualifying purposes in World and Asian Cups. An East Asia-Pacific group (incorporating Australia-Oceania, South-East Asia and East Asia). And a South and West Asia group (incorporating the South Asian subcontinent, the Middle East and the Asian ex Soviet Republics). Only crossing over in the penultimate phase of qualifying.
Asia has talked about splitting this way anyway, even without taking Oceania into account. It's such a big geographic region, with so many time zones, I can see why they would think about options like that.
I'm not. It took a lot of lobbying, selling of votes, and Blatter's support to get Australia a fair run into the World Cup. Lowey used his personal relationship with Blatter to get us into the AFC. So while the FIFA way of doing *smile* was abhorrent, I'll always bite my tongue a little because we used it to our advantage and it made a massive difference to the sport in Australia.
Yep, which is universally what the footballing world thought of Australia.
