Tag: football

Australian soccer needs a drama queen

Posted on by SW

So Australia is out of the World Cup. Again.

We didn’t make it beyond the Group Stage, by forgetting the premise of the game – get the ball into the net – especially against that football superpower Peru.

Right now, the clipboard-wielding boffins at Football Federation Australia are locked in crisis-think tank-workshop-post mortems, ruminating where our campaign went wrong,
and hopefully looking down the back of the lounge for a striker.

Australia’s new soccer coach

As Australia embarks on the sandblasted “Road To Qatar”, I have the solution, and it has nothing to do with kicking said ball. It’s acting.

Stay with me. Some of the performances we have seen in the World Cup have been brilliant. Brazilian superstar Neymar took a pathetic award-winning dive and the piss, falling to the pitch mortally wounded, like he’d just had a Brazilian.

See, this is where Australia falls down. Or not. We need to get onboard this diving caper. It’s essential.

Forget combing the world (Europe) for our next unpronounceable coach to not take us past the Group Stage in 2022, we need actors in charge. Bloody good actors. Luckily, Australia has produced some of the finest in the world.

I call for Cate Blanchett to be annointed as Socceroos coach.

This is inspired. Imagine what the Academy Award / Golden Globe / BAFTA / etc, etc-winner could do to make Australia competitive on soccer’s greatest stage. The subtle nuances of mock-agony… the unworldly talent of clutching your face, screaming like you have just been shot, when you only received a mere fairytap on your knee. Penalty. Thanks Cate.

There’s been talk of not enough “mongrel” in the Australian team… hire Alf Stewart from Home and Away as Assistant Coach. He’d flamin’ sort ’em out, quick smart. Geoffrey Rush could chime in with brilliant character acting expertise, very handy when convincing the ref you have been critically injured by a non-existent elbow. Penalty.

Don’t you see? We would beat those dive-and-piss-taking-thespians from Europe and South America at their own game.

This is the future of Australian soccer. Let’s create our own Theatre of Dreams.
“Hello, Cate…”

©Steve Williams 2018

World Cup miracles – Jesus saves but lets one in

Posted on by SW

Any heretic that scoffs at the premise that football (soccer to Australian and US readers) is a religious experience is a doubting Thomas… or Miguel or Gabriela to give it a slight Brazilian.

A World Cup relic – Maradona’s “Hand of God”

Only an association football apostate would dispute the fact that miracles are being performed in the World Cup by the wine vat-load.

I’m not talking about how some of the players’ mohawks and afros stay up, or Tim Cahill’s goal — forget Betty tapping him on the shoulder with a sword — just give him that Sydney expressway, but I digress.

Every single match a player is apparently tragically killed, or at the very least mortally wounded — rolling around on the sprayed-on grass, their face a twisted, grotesque mask of agony, as they desperately clutch a body part that is in danger of falling off at any second.

Then yea, once the ref bloweth thou whistle and thine penalty is awarded, the dead and wounded spring miraculously to their feet, the “injury” fully cured, without even a splash of the holy water from the magic sponge.

Hallelujah! Resurrection! It’s like Easter every ninety minutes, just without the cave and rock bit, and chocolate bunnies.

Messianic miracles are not only happening ON the pitch.

Nay, a group of wheelchair-bound Brazil supporters were suddenly cured of their afflictions, jumping up in an exalted leap onto their not-so atrophied limbs. They then followed the word of the law-d, taking up their wheelchairs and walking out of the stadium escorted by security guards not swept up in the ecclesiastical euphoria.

Jesus! If I could see just one World Cup game without a player prostrate in penalty prayer, THAT would be a miracle.

Here endeth the lesson.

©Steve Williams 2014