Saturday, February 11, 2006
England Fans Expect
As the calender passes into February, we England fans are waiting for several pieces of news. The first is tickets for the World Cup. I'm talking about the allocation for the English FA, not FIFA tickets. It is well documentated that the criminally low 8% of stadium capacity will be nowhere near enough to satisfy demand from England fans but thankfully, the FA have managed to secure extra tickets. We will now have 5,500 tickets for the opening game against Paraguay in Frankfurt which takes us to near 13% of capacity in the Wald Stadium. Our allocation for the other two games has risen to about 4,500, around 10%. Now England fans are very resourceful when it comes to tickets so it probably doesn't mean there will be extra fans in the stadium. It just means they will have paid face value instead of the €500+ per ticket that is going rate on the black market.
Our hysterical media have been having a field day with speculation as to who the new England manager will be after the World Cup. Early favourite, Steve McLaren, has signed a new contract at Middlesboro and looks to be out of the running (thank god). The leading English candidate is Big Sam Alardyce. He would be an interesting choice as he has done wonders with Bolton Wanderers although he does get criticism for his style of play. However, you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear (or as a friend says, "You can't polish a turd"). I think he's quite inventive with ideas he has for the game and could be an interesting appointment.
The leading foreign candidate appears to be Gus Hiddink. He took South Korea to the World Cup semi-finals in 2002 and has just lead Australia to their first finals since Captain Cook upset some of the locals. On the surface, these seem impressive acheivements but I need to play devils advocat here. In 2002, South Korea had home advantage but more significantly, the squad were together for 6 months before the tournament. This is a luxury that few if any other international coachs will get. You do wonder how they would have got on with just 2 or 3 weeks preparation together. We also won't mention a couple of dodgy decisions that helped them along the way. Australia again can be put down to law of averages. Australia winning their qualifying group is one of the safest bets in the world and every 4 years they end up in a 2 leg play-off. Usually, they lose but this year they won, beating Uruguay on penalties. Again without wanting to belittle their achievements, you can't keep losing play-offs.
This week, a leading FA figure said they would ideally be looking for a British candidate. The use of the word British, instead of English immediately kicked off a frenzy in the press that Martin O'Neill was high on a shortlist. Football wise, O'Neill would seem to be a good choice but there is a problem. It's not his wife's tragic illness but his roots. Rightly or wrongly, his time at Celtic and comments he made mean that he will almost certainly never win over a number of England fans. The Euro 2008 draw is fairly easy so if O'Neill took over and won every day, it would be no more than expected. If he dropped any points, he will get a lot of stick. I do think he would be in a no-win position until the 2008 finals in Austria and Switzerland.
One thing is certain, there will be plenty of speculation and mis-information until the FA finally make an annoucement.
The FA is having a meeting with all other teams in Group E to sort out the fixtures for the Euro 2008 qualifiers. The meeting will be held on 23rd February in Zagreb. Details will be found on www.euro2008info.com/groupe.htm when they are confirmed.
The away game in Russia will personally be a good trip for me. I spend a lot of time in Moscow and have been speaking with a travel agent there to help arrange trips for supporters. More information when the packages are finalised. There is plenty of travel information for Moscow on www.travel-2-russia.com
Our hysterical media have been having a field day with speculation as to who the new England manager will be after the World Cup. Early favourite, Steve McLaren, has signed a new contract at Middlesboro and looks to be out of the running (thank god). The leading English candidate is Big Sam Alardyce. He would be an interesting choice as he has done wonders with Bolton Wanderers although he does get criticism for his style of play. However, you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear (or as a friend says, "You can't polish a turd"). I think he's quite inventive with ideas he has for the game and could be an interesting appointment.
The leading foreign candidate appears to be Gus Hiddink. He took South Korea to the World Cup semi-finals in 2002 and has just lead Australia to their first finals since Captain Cook upset some of the locals. On the surface, these seem impressive acheivements but I need to play devils advocat here. In 2002, South Korea had home advantage but more significantly, the squad were together for 6 months before the tournament. This is a luxury that few if any other international coachs will get. You do wonder how they would have got on with just 2 or 3 weeks preparation together. We also won't mention a couple of dodgy decisions that helped them along the way. Australia again can be put down to law of averages. Australia winning their qualifying group is one of the safest bets in the world and every 4 years they end up in a 2 leg play-off. Usually, they lose but this year they won, beating Uruguay on penalties. Again without wanting to belittle their achievements, you can't keep losing play-offs.
This week, a leading FA figure said they would ideally be looking for a British candidate. The use of the word British, instead of English immediately kicked off a frenzy in the press that Martin O'Neill was high on a shortlist. Football wise, O'Neill would seem to be a good choice but there is a problem. It's not his wife's tragic illness but his roots. Rightly or wrongly, his time at Celtic and comments he made mean that he will almost certainly never win over a number of England fans. The Euro 2008 draw is fairly easy so if O'Neill took over and won every day, it would be no more than expected. If he dropped any points, he will get a lot of stick. I do think he would be in a no-win position until the 2008 finals in Austria and Switzerland.
One thing is certain, there will be plenty of speculation and mis-information until the FA finally make an annoucement.
The FA is having a meeting with all other teams in Group E to sort out the fixtures for the Euro 2008 qualifiers. The meeting will be held on 23rd February in Zagreb. Details will be found on www.euro2008info.com/groupe.htm when they are confirmed.
The away game in Russia will personally be a good trip for me. I spend a lot of time in Moscow and have been speaking with a travel agent there to help arrange trips for supporters. More information when the packages are finalised. There is plenty of travel information for Moscow on www.travel-2-russia.com
// posted by Big Blue Marble @ 1:01 pm 
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