100% would expect to beat Bolivia, they struggle away from LaPaz where they have advantage of altitude. Paraguay could be a chance to get a point but you never know with them. Argentina haven’t been in good shape for a while now and did struggle at this year’s Copa so you never know.

BEIN Sports own the rights to the Copa America so sadly SBS are unlikely to be able to show the games unless they can do a deal to show Australia’s matches.

There will be a ticket portal opening aprrox. 2-3 months out from the tournament. Tickets shouldn’t be hard to come by (except for the Argentina games) as most locals won’t be able to afford them and South American fans tend not to travel in huge numbers for the Copa the way they do for a WC. BA to Cordoba is only approx 1 hour flight and relatively cheap.

“Will Uruguay be fired up to take on the Socceroos at the historic Monumental? You’d better believe it.” Given that we play them in Cordoba I choose not to believe it. Shame that if there had to be co-hosts it’s not Argentina and Uruguay as it would’ve been awesome to play in Montevideo. I would expect the Argentina fans will get behind the neutral matches in a way that the Brazilian fans didn’t at the world cup. And hopefully the Chile fans will come across in huge numbers.

Greg O’Rourke was interviewed by Adam Peacock on Fox Football Podcast yesterday and he did talk about why they didn’t delay entry until the stadium was ready, He said that it was a case of the bid needing the licence to be granted in order for the stadium to be built. Now for me you can grant a license with a future start date and that’s what should’ve have happened in this instance but clearly the FFA were desperate for the cash so didn’t do this. Interestingly enough he said Team 11 were in similar situation (which is true) but from memory the commentary around the time of the announcement was Western United it was a guaranteed stadium. I hope it works as we need football specific stadiums but I have a lot of questions about the deal and just whose money it is and what will be the taxpayer asked to provide (as no developer got rich by only using private money).

The bid actually started life as Geelong based and had Josip Skoko involved. Fox Sports had an agreement with FFA that depending on where expansion was located they would provide extra cash (i.e. create more derbies and we’ll give you more money). So the FFA encouraged the bid to move to Melbourne and somewhere along the line the property developers became involved.

Macarthur have a stadium deal already in place before they enter the league. Western United’s whole pitch for entry ahead of a team in SE Melbourne (team 11) which had ready made supporter base was they would build their own stadium and didn’t need taxpayer money to do so. And that it would be built within 3 years and implied they would start work almost immediately because of the existing relationship with city council. Team 11 bid needed government assistance to build the stadium and as a state election was on government was loathe to commit money (plus they had already provided funding to build permanent base for The Matildas out there).

In all sporting codes in Australia there seems to be a tendency in relation to expansion that the people in charge think that by plonking a club down where there isn’t one people will be so grateful to have a team they’ll be falling over themselves to support it. The MLS do it best when they plan expansion years ahead of time and only grant a license if there is a guaranteed stadium.

Planning permission has yet to be granted and the train station that needs to be built (as the ground sits between two existing stations) won’t be ready until 2027. The problem is this is a real estate project dressed up as a football club. The council agreed to sell them the land cheaply in return for the owners developing the surrounding area. The club representatives as part of their licence application for the league trumpeted that no tax payer money would be spent but questions remain as to who will pay for the surrounding infrastructure. And rumors persist about just where the money is coming from and that the money may not even be there anymore.

Simon Hill made a good point on last week’s Fox podcast about how it’s not hard to get Australians to rally around a national team in any code but converting that support into rusted on fans at club level is much much harder. I know Adam Peacock talks along the same lines you do about needing time to build the generational support – i.e. kids playing the game today who don’t make it as a professional still stay involved supporting the game and in turn pass that support onto their children etc. To truly find out what level of support is out there for the clubs we could start by drastically reducing ticket prices. Make all tickets $10-15 every week for an a few seasons and see what that does to crowds. If crowd numbers increase then there is some evidence to suggest the price point has previously been wrong. I know stadium costs are high but no excuse for Melbourne City charging Victory fans $55 for the Christmas derby for example.

The majority of time a player “dives” in the box is because they know if they stay on their feet the ref will never pay a foul/award a penalty. Just because you don’t go down doesn’t mean it’s not a foul but that’s how most refs tend to operate so therefore players go down.

Was Gallop anything ever more than a yes man though? Essentially he was just doing whatever the Lowy’s told him to do. Not saying he wasn’t rubbish as he was but I do wonder if his public utterances were ever his own idea or not.

It’s interesting the contrasting ways Verbeek and Postecoglou are viewed considering they were given vastly different remits. Verbeek was employed to ensure Australia qualified for 2010 WC and that was it, how he did it was up to him. AP was employed to guide Australia through to 2018 WC whilst revitalising the playing squad and implementing a more attractive style of play. Both did what they were employed to do yet AP is still not given the credit he deserves for what he achieved.

I still remember Bosnich after MV lost back to back games 5-0 in 2014 season imploring Muscat to park the bus in the next game or risk getting sacked. This was the season when Ange left partway through to takeover Socceroos job so Muscat took over in difficult circumstances and so the comment was so patently absurb. If Bosnich was in charge of a club he’d go through at least 10 managers a season I reckon.

I’m a Victory fan who wasn’t overly enamored by the appointment of Kurz yet I don’t entirely blame him for what’s happened this season. This is a continuation of a trend that has been happening since we won the double in 2015 which hints at structural problem within the club. The club like to talk about being the biggest in the land and anything other than winning as unacceptable but you still have to have a plan, a philosophical approach as to how you want to play and show patience sometimes especially with recruitment. It seems to be that ever since the double winning season Victory have essentially tried to play the exact same way every year and so their attitude to recruitment has been to try and find like for like replacement players. So when Delpierre retired every season since Victory have signed an experienced central defender from Europe. Milligan, Troisii and Barbarouses all left and came back when either a) they couldn’t find another club (Troisi) or it didn’t work out for various reasons (Milligan and Barbarouses ). In essence there’s nothing inherently wrong with that but you can never exactly replace like for like and you have to keep evolving and tweaking things. Especially in a salary cap environment.

the board of the FFA have no control over this situation – under the FFA constitution it’s the FFA congress who have the power to remove Reid. Have a read of this article by Bonita Mersiades in which she addresses the Reid issue. https://footballtoday.news/features/ffa-board-12-months-old-today

I was watching the W-League but on the odd occasion I switched over to this match all I could see was a packed crowd with lots of Orange and it just looked so much better than a whole sea of empty seats. Credit to Brisbane for listening to their fans and trying something different.

To be fair to the W-League they’re not the only league struggling with giving the women’s league a separate identity whilst at the same time ensuring they are rightly recognised as one of many teams within the one club. In England they seem to be settling on Sunday as being the main day for games as there aren’t as any mens games as on a Saturday.
I understand your point about back to back games from a fan viewpoint but the reality is the majority of fans are still prioritsing the A-League match over the W-League even when there is a double header which doesn’t help. Living in Melbourne whilst I get annoyed at the self-congratulatory tone of much of the AFLW coverage (memo Victorian media – the AFL didn’t invent women’s sport) it’s been interesting to note it’s brought a lot of new fans to the sport that for one reason or another didn’t previously follow the AFL. Having attended men’s world cups and then attending my first women’s one this year I noticed quite a different audience in France than I have noticed at men’s WC. So we can acknowledge that there are fans who want to attend both their men’s and women’s teams games and try and schedule games on different days but also understand that the W-League can bring a new audience to the game by being it’s own separate entity and everyone wins in this case. Either way it’s a discussion the game needs to have if the whole of the game is going to grow.

Could a team from Woolongong survive in the W-League as a standalone team though (from a financial viewpoint)? Canberra United struggle as a standalone club with no mens team to help support them (financially, facilities etc.) Don’t get me wrong I would love to see a team from Wollongong in both the A-League and W-League but with the lack of money in womens football at a domestic level at the moment not sure standalone teams are the way to go. And we also need to link up with the NPLW a lot better. As much as I hate the links with the NWSL for the short term we need to accept these links and be content with a full home & away season featuring the current clubs whilst laying down the foundation to expand in the coming years (starting with teams from the Mariners, Western United and Macarthur) and creating a league to rival those in Europe (and really only the WSL in England is a fproperly competitive league in Europe as things stand). And work on the pathways from grassroots to NPLW to W-League

Not having a full home & away season is more to do with the FFA and the clubs not taking the W-League seriously so a shorter season allows players to play both in the NWSL and W-League. And now with the rise of Europe the FFA’s answer seems to be to double down on the links with the NWSL rather than try and build the W-League to compete with Europe (which it can by attracting the top Asian, African & South American talent as well as top line Australian talent). Read the interview Greg O’Rourke gave to the womens game recently – “We want to have more games, the question is, do we want to have more games through expansion or a home and away season,” said O’Rourke. “What we ask of the NWSL we ask of ourselves and what they ask of us is if we go to more games, where does that fit into our calendar? Does that come up against NWSL pre-season?” So the FFA seem happy for the w-League to play second fiddle to the NWSL and a short season is part of that.

Interesting you say that about playing W-League after the A-League. Perth Glory have experimented with that a few times but the crowd didn’t stick around. I just don’t think double headers are a good idea as it erodes the identity of the W-League being a professional entity in its own right. It’s a difficult balancing act though for the women’s game in leveraging off the men’s game whilst building their own identity,rivalries etc. Agree with you about Thursday night games as not a fan friendly time slot at all and reinforces the impression that the W-League merely slots in around the A-League. We really need crowds to go to W-League matches to convince clubs to continue to invest in their teams. Having said that, playing in summer means options as to when to play games are limited unless you schedule them against A-League games?

“I’m from Canberra and don’t have a team to support ” Umm Canberra United? Unless of course you mean you don’t have a male team to support. Which is different to saying you don’t have a team to support.

I deliberately left Canberra out of point 7 as they are a standalone club. But that was remiss of me considering that as they are a standalone club their resources are considerably less than the other teams and thus be much harder to attract kit manufacturer etc. I actually think Canberra are the example to follow for all other W-League teams on how to connect with your community.

and has often played at NPLW level during winter as well so has a strong footballing background.

It’s the W-League that suffers most from the change of date for the A-League ‘big blue’. What should’ve been a great occasion of last year’s premiers travelling to take on the champions in a standalone fixture following hot on the heals of getting 20,000 to the Matildas last weekend becomes lost in all the discussion about lack of international breaks in the A-League etc. And of course the media focus is going to be on the A-League match because Melb V v Sydney FC is always one of the biggest matches of any season and is amplified by Victory’s struggles so far.