Laurence Plant's Roar Profile

I take your point that football has had traditional links to some political leaders, but I still reckon that we have not seen this level of competition between nations over football before. I think all hell is going to break loose as the US tries to undermine Russia’s world cup, and England undermines Qatar’s world cup. I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of competition before.

In terms of your point about western power, I actually think the issue is that there is no central authority in the game. One of the problems is that in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia it’s quite acceptable practice to make a payment to win business. In the west we call this corruption. It is the multi-polar nature of the power structures in football that mean the competition between spheres such as the west and the middle east will continue.

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I think even if FIFA suceeds in stopping bribes for WC votes, it’s going to be very hard to stop other vote distortions such as countries donating money to football programs in poor countries, and countries working in alliances seeking to rotate the bid amongst themselves

It’s interesting the US has claimed jurisdiction over this matter given that it was their financial system that was used to make the payments. I guess you could argue fair enough, but who is going to prosecute payments made through other networks? And is it right that some are prosecuted whilst others are not?

Maybe future bribes will all be in Bitcoin.

Yeah you raise a good point, someone has to buy the vote for it to be sold.

And I can’t help but wonder, if the US had actually won WC 2022 would this investigation have taken place?

The whole thing is the NRL’s fault, lock stock and barrel.

They introduced the silly system that led to all this.

Just another one of the “good ideas” they’ve “improved” the game with. Not.

Blaming the players is misdirected. Blame the NRL.

MASCORD: DCE tried to throw us off the scent, but we saw it coming

League

No one in QLD likes the Titans lol.

Queensland boss says Maroon fans aren't impressed with DCE

Who knows, we might have gotten a tip from the US that they had Blatter on the rack…

Football finally gets the head of the octopus

Yeah, if the WSW play Real Madrid, I’m taking a week off work.

Do you reckon Victorians watch WSW vs Al Hilal or the Melbourne derby, when they were both on the same night?

Every Victorian I know watched the derby, and either didn’t care, or acted like they didn’t care about the Wanderers’ ACL efforts. I reckon if Victory can go deep in the comp Victorians will become more engaged, but I’m not convinced that the WSW win has sparked ACL interest among all football fans?

Only trouble is Towser, the money isn’t all that great unless you make the final:

Phase Result Travel Subsidy
Qualifying Playoffs No prize money, and $20,000 travel funding
Group stages Win: $40,000 & Draw: $20,000
Round of 16 $50,000
Quarter-finals $80,000
Semi-finals $120,000
Final Champions: $1.5 million & Runners-up: $750,000

Yeah no doubt Japan hasn’t won since ’08 and there has been a bit of commentary around the state of the game over there. But in ’09 they had a SF, QF and 2 clubs in the R16; in ’10 they had 2 clubs in R16 and 2 in the Group Stage; in ’11 they had 3 clubs in the R16 and one club in the QF; in ’12 they had 3 clubs in the R16 and 1 in the Group stage; and in ’13 they had a SF and a club in the group stage.

Although the Japanese haven’t won that is an awful lot of representation, and the Japanese market is worth a whole lot more in terms of viewers and money. And the Japanese were originally part of the AFC, and so are in a different category to Australia.

I imagine a future 2nd tier will be made up of 20 or so of the best clubs from all of the NPL states. Then you could have the NPL Leagues operating under that. Each year 3 teams drop out of the top tier to be replaced by the best from their state. Potentially, we’re probably still a long way from that because the standard of the grounds of a lot of NPL clubs is too poor for top-flight football.

The A-League viewership in the UK probably mirrors that of Championship football, and is probably way less that the CSL attracts in China.

Yeah I do think that with time Young’s confidence could well improve – but that wonn’t help the Roar’s defensive worries at the moment. Potentially the defensive lads are looking at the players up front and getting depressed, but I reckon it’s more likely to be the change in keeper. And definitely we are only 3 games in and the Roar have the chance to turn their season around, but I think most people would be surprised they are equal bottom after 3 rounds.

At the moment the Roar have already conceded 7 goals in 3 games – last year they only conceded 25 all season. If they concede 2 more next week they will already have conceded over a third of the goals they did in their entire championship year (27 games). And after 3 games last season they had only conceded 2 goals, despite losing one of their first 3 games.

The funny thing is I think the Roar midfield is the one part of the team that’s really performing. The possession stats are good and the passing looks good. They just don’t have a target in the box like they used to, and service out of defence has been troubled. LP

Thanks for reading Rob.

Basically my comment on the new-look logo was just a quip because the A-League has said team logos can’t have any relationship to ethnicity or culture, and the new Lion kinda looks like a Welsh or Gaelic lion to me. You could also argue it links to a Dutch heritage. The point I found interesting is, under the new rules a logo should technically not be allowed link to anything that isn’t related to the club’s geographical area (in this case Brisbane). It was intended to be humorous rather than a serious comment though.

I reckon the defenders at Roar seem rattled, and I just know that your job in defence is that much harder without a confident keeper. Young just looks a bit too tentative for me, and I reckon the Roar defence are second-guessing situations because they aren’t 100% sure what their keeper is gonna do. LP