It's not all doom and gloom when it comes to the ACL

AFC needs to split, East/West it's too big.

WSW should have a penalty against them from a NTS foul. 4-1 would have been a fairer result. Ulsan sat back early - saw what Wanderers and just increased the tempo and pressure. .

Stephen I dont agree with your theory where you say teams get ten men behind the ball in modern football ,I disagree and really see less of it year after year. The emphasis is for dynamic offensively play in most modern leagues, even in leagues such as the English Championship. I dont want to turn this into a competition of global standard but the level of HAL football from the top two to three teams annually is at an acceptable level to most leagues away from the big 5-6 leagues throughout the world. We have a professional football league in this country thats less than a decade old, lets have a look at it in 15-20 years. The only way is up.

You keep shooting at the messenger, but you haven't hit me yet. I'm an English football fan, in, you know, England. Fussball war auch meiner Leben, i followed my club all over England, and have watched football around Europe and Japan. While I can still enjoy the odd game, sterile, cynical play has taken over at the top level, where "10 behind the ball" is the strategy and 0-0 the prize too easily won. In response, the attacking response is to manufacture chances by cheating. It's gone from a thrilling contact sport to one where you hear "There was definitely contact. he's entitled to go down." This isn't a nationalist rant, Michael Owen was the worst offender. Worst of all, in the grubby hands of corrupt buffoons like Blatter and Platini, the intense showcase tournaments, the World Cup and European Championships have been diluted and extended to maximise TV rights and sponsor revenue. A championship without say England, France, Italy and latterly Japan and the US is COMMERCIALLY unthinkable, so they have ensured it can't happen. As a result we have to wade through weeks of dross to get to the point where two teams who might actually win the thing finally get to play a meaningful game. What's worse, football has become the vehicle for convincing you that Roman Abramovich is a nice guy, Qatar and Dubai are great places to live and work and Gazprom is a good corporate citizen. This is the football family you want to be a part of. I'm touched by your pride in your IKEA-built domestic competition, the league that only seems to have a 3rd division, that most of your own best players turn down for a chance to sit on a sub's bench in obscure corners of Europe. I can feel the delight you experience when you get to see Robbie Fowler's wobbling beer-gut and William Gallas's scarred slow-motion legs up close. The joy you feel at watching Premier league reserves going through the motions in a pre-season kickabout is up there with that of 12 year-old girls while One Direction lip-sync in the far distance. But if Blatterball succeeds in conquering Australia, it would be a triumph akin to turning the Galapagos Islands into a golf resort, or astroturfing the palace gardens at Versailles. Football in Australia, the same as everywhere else, but worse.

Ulsan Hyundai was clearly 10 levels better than WSW. Despite playing hoofball at times, it was obvious that their quick passing through the centre of the field and their combinations was much superior to WSW . FC Seoul and Guangzhou Evergrande didn't even have to try, their pressing destroyed the Australian teams who panicked whenever there was pressure.

I like scat.

Stephen Martin maybe you're a little confused, people like football because they like football not just to become distinctive or colonial!!!!!

Sensitive much? What I said is still true whether you get offended by it or not. One is in a local environment and one is in a global environment. So you can't really compare.

@Stephen Martin "I'’m an English football fan" .. If you're suggesting English football is "high quality", then I have to assume you're watching 30 second highlights on Ch9 Sunday News? :-) Or, you have an unsophisticated appreciation of TBG. If football fans were only interested in watching the best football players, no one would watch anything other than the top 1/2 dozen teams in half a dozen countries. So, common sense should dictate that people, who are committed football fans (as opposed to event watchers) watch domestic football for reasons well beyond "I wanna only watch the best in the world". Enjoy you late night EPL viewing .. probably easier to stick to the 30 second highlights on Ch9 News.

Stephen, are you bragging about English football? hahahhahhahahahah! *deep breath* hhahahahahhahaha Just another sport you invented and are mediocre at.

Shows what you know, and you're supposed to be an expert. I'm an English football fan, been watching the game here for over 40 years. The version of the game you watch is utterly dismal and derivative - Emile Heskey, Michael Bridges and Paul Ifill are marquee players? The most distinctive feature of the game there is your plastic version of terrace culture from thousands of miles away, and the highlight of your year is pre-season friendlies against reserve squads of bored old lags and triallists. Australia has a fabulous diverse sporting culture, and you want to roll it flat to make more room for the dreary monoculture pumped out by adidas and Nike. You can be distinctive or a colony. Your choice.

JB, while I was too young to remember, I certainly have read about the great Real Madrid sides & then followed by the great Benfica sides of that time. It took 13 years for an English club to win the competition, though a British club, Celtic, did win it a year before. It then too another 11 years for another English club to win it again. Johan as usual likes to death ride anything related to football, some sort of fear methinks.

Some interesting discourse on the outcome of our 3 recent ACL games.Mike tries to simplify things by saying goals were caused by mistakes being made,surely that is the essence of any goal,someone in the defending team has made a mistake.The eradication of mistakes in football is the prerogative of coaches but it should be remembered there are 2 sides to football,the function of attack and the function of defence, and an examination of these functions leads to the age old debate ,what would be the final result in the "perfect" game of football,would it be 0-0 or as many goals as could be scored in 90 minutes of play. I'll leave that to the reader. What is more important is that 3 years ago I watched a team from Thailand take apart our best tam in the HAL at that time,Brisbane Roar and it was done by all that is good in the game,great ball skills,great movement on and off the ball,and, should it be said, superior fitness both in thought and physicality.Have things improved????? Roar are not playing in the ACL this year and yet just a few weeks ago were leading the HAL by 10 points.I know CCM have lost a lot of talent but although they were probably the worst performing in the recent games the other two of our reps were still shown to be well below the standard of their opponents as the scores suggest. For 45 minutes Victory lifted all our spirits with their display but with them being in the middle of our season and their opponents not yet started the question still remains, Mike,that gap is what has to be remedied and sadly there is little evidence after 3 years that improvement is being achieved,jb

Johan - you're probably too young to remember but when the European Cup started in 1955 the ruling body at that time had almost to plead with clubs to take part. Real Madrid actually won the trophy 5 times straight before the rest of European football began to catch on to the fact that this tournament actually might turn into the huge money spinner it has become.In fact that fifth win, 7-3 against Eintracht Frankfurt,played in "neutral" Scotland and watched by 127,000 is regarded by many as one of the finest display of attacking football ever played,& could well be said to have been the turning point in the competition for ,since that time,with the advent of world wide telecommunications the competition has grown in stature to become second only in importance to the World Cup. The Asian version could well be said to be in the same position as in those first 5 years of the EC but with huge populations in the main areas the "explosion of interest" could well be on our doorstep.When and if that is achieved we could then see a World Cup being played for by championship CLUB sides.The embryo is in existence with European champions playing South American champions,a natural set up for expansion of the idea. Such is the potential for the World Game. jb

Oh dear, Stephen Martin .. that's all you can add to a football discussion? Is that because you've had too many punches to the head? Or maybe too many narcotics? Hope your gonads haven't shriveled with all the steroids? If AFL is considered the pinnacle of your sport, you really have low expectations in life! :-D

Or alternatively, you can choose between watching brilliant athletes playing at the competitive pinnacle of their sport, or a mixture of has-beens and clumsy scufflers playing the same game as the rest of the world, only worse, while half-empty stands give their best Glee-inflected versions of derivative chants.

Here in straya we speak aussie.

It's not just about population, but competition for the athlete also. Watch AFL and NRL into The Netherlands with similar commercial dominance and see what happens to their football.

CKellet Whats good about that is most of those clubs are now household names amongst most HAL supporters with the likes of Pohang Bunyodkor and Al Ittihad to name a few so people cant say it doesn't have any impact in Australia. Fussball, (I wonder how CCM would perform if they could inject the following players into the Starting XI: Maty Ryan, Tommy Rogic, Patrick Zwaanswijk, Trent Sainsbury, Pedj Bojić, Mike McGlinchey, Oli Bozanic & Daniel McBreen That’s 8 players missing from the team that actually qualified for the ACL.). Tell me about it. I'm sure they'd get out of a group if they were still there.

Anyone know how Mitch Nichols fared with Cerezo? Any other Aussies?