I had a dream a couple of nights ago about the Australia v Paraguay match which is set to kick-off in about an hour or so. It wasn’t so much a dream, but more of a nightmare, with the Socceroos going down 1-0 in the match. When I awoke, I could hardly contain my anger and rage at Arnold and Kosmina… these two clowns shouldn’t have been given the honour of coaching Australia, even in a caretaker role, and should have been given their marching orders after the Kuwait debacle, but if my dream turns out to be a preminision, they should have their citzenship stripped and sent off to Nauru.

Couldn’t get organised enough to post my A-League tips for the last two weeks here, but I did submit them to footytips.com.au. Not that they were really anything to write about… managing only two for Round 2 and a dismal one for Round 3.

So, considering I did a fair bit better on my AFL tipping at work this year than I seem to be doing on my A-League tipping, I’m going to resort to employing my AFL tipping strategy here. It’s basically a set and forget strategy i.e. tip on the Monday and don’t worry about it until the following Monday when I check to see how I went. That said, here are my tips for Round 4.

Another aspect of the “set and forget” strategy is not caring how the experts are doing, so I’ll only compare my score to theirs every month or so.

Finally, the second season of A-League has arrived… and once again I’ll be letting you know my tips for each round. Unlike last season though, I’ll be up against some added competition from the “experts“. Also, I’ve submitted my tips on the footytips.com.au A-League comp.The increased attention is probably a product of the success of last year and of the Socceroos at the World Cup in Germany. Regardless of the reason, it’s good to see interest growing.

So… my tips.

Melbourne Victory FC v Adelaide United FC [1:1]
Queensland Roar FC v Perth Glory FC [1:0]
New Zealand Knights FC v Newcastle Jets FC [0:1]
Sydney FC v Central Coast Mariners FC [1:1]

Let the games begin.

[Update 28/08] – The SBS team are publishing their A-League tips on the SBS World Game website.

My efforts for the round were pretty poor, managing to only tip the Qld win over Perth… this puts me on equal pegging with Damo and Andrew from SBS, Cheryl and Graham at SMH and the monkey with the keyboard ((Representing random dumb luck, i.e. what a monkey with a keyboard should be able to manage based on statistics alone)). Only Tony (SBS) has started worse. Three SMHs managed 3 right (Hazem, Anthony and Michael L ((Though Michael Lynch is actually a writer for The Age))). Interestingly, only Branko (SBS) tipped Melbourne correctly.

Finally, thanks to James over at Confessions of an A-League Junkie, I’ve discoverd and submitted a team into the A-League Fantasy Team comp over at Fox Sports.

Unfortunate name generated by the BrazilName generator

Try to get my mind off the Australia v Italy result, and waiting for the Ukraine v Switzerland match, I thought I’d post something I found a few days ago.

The BrazilName Generator allows one to find out what their name might be if they were selected to play for the Brazilian national football team.

As you can see from the image above, the name created by the generator, based on my real name is quite unfortunate… “Vladildo” isn’t all that flattering, but at least it’s not the worst I’ve seen. Amanda was unfortunate enough to score “Amandildo” as her BrazilName… i.e. “A Man Dildo”. Now this conjures images of a player that is known for his “penetrating runs”, “probing long balls” and “ability to get through the opponents backline”.

Sorry… I had to say it.

Anyway, this led me to an informative article about how Brazilians actually do get their names, and they don’t use the BrazilName generator.

I’m gutted… I want to vent… desperately want to get the anger, disappointment etc off my chest… but the words just aren’t coming. Not really much I could say that hasn’t been said elsewhere:

Italy had better chances, Australia was the better team, and the ref made two mistakes
a) not awarding a penalty for hand ball when Aloisi went for the overhead kick.
b) Awarding the penaly in the dying seconds when it was clearly not a foul.
I have to say, that the Spanish ref was by far the best ref Australia has had except for the fact that he cost us the most.

In short, Australia should be proud of their efforts, and in a fair and just world, that match would have gone to extra time, at the least.

Now, I just hope that karma comes and bites these Italian’s on the ass in the next game.

Going to my “happy place” now… perhaps the Ukrainian’s can beat the Swiss and inflict a good karma balancing thumping in the quarter-finals.

Well done Socceroos…

I’ve managed to convince the administrators of the World Cup Blog to let me contribute to the Australian section of their site… I guess that didn’t read the links I sent to them as example of my writing ability. Anyway, I just posted my second story for the site, in which I tried to steer clear of my usual Frank Farina bashing.