More here if you're interested. I would stick around but I have had several heart attacks tonight and a massive coronary from this post (DAMN YOU MOONBIRD!)

heheee bdave. You are one of the previously uninterested people that Soccer Australia NEED to convert to increase interest to increase kids playing to increase quality of best players to increase quality of senior teams.

That's why it has been a drought for 31 years.

I watched the game this evening and thought it was a pretty scrappy affair. Neither team really played that well although I think the outcome was fair (despite my nationality). Uruguay would have to admit they didn't play so well. Winning on penalties is a bitch, though.

I've always loved soccer football but I've always been ambivalent about Aussie teams because there is such an underwhelming support for it here (much like I expect it is in the States) with more successful competing codes of competitive sports.

I prefer me the South American or European kind of spectacle but I'm glad Oz is through to the world cup - that's the stuff that will galvanize a broader support base.

much like I expect it is in the States

WHAAAAA?

DEE-CEE UNIII-TED! [boom-boom, boom-boom-boom-boom] DEE-CEE UNIII-TED [boom-boom, boom-boom-boom-boom]

I LOVE FREDDY ADU!

LONG LIVE BRUCE ARENA!

So Hugh, are you saying that the guys go to the bar and watch soccer football and it's like the normal done thing? Or would gridiron more correctly hold that mantle?

Or is it that it has a niche market where some people get into it but it doesn't stir the national fervour?

And I love Freddy (from what I've seen) and Bruce is ok. The States have a pretty good team actually.

I call it soccer, like the English taught me to.

Nothing'll touch the popularity of football here, or baseball, which presents more of a schedule conflict. It's usually tough to get the bartender to switch games. So it's an uphill battle.

But the USA has the best coach in the world (look at his record; look where the US is ranked since he took over; realize that he's Rumplestiltskin here, spinning straw into gold, unlike the coaches of the "great" teams -- shit, England haven't had a good coach in decades. Brazil win with talent alone -- their coach makes them worse).

So CONCACAF is a backwater. But it's my backwater, and my home team is a perennial contender, no matter what the MLS does to trade away its talent during the offseason (and they do -- it galls Garber that such a small market as DC always wins and the big market NYC team are rot masters).

It stirred my fervor when I watched the US National Team beat Argentina at RFK Stadium a couple years ago. Fuckin-A, it did.

Soccer really is gaining ground in the US. Chicago has been converting softball fields into soccer fields, probably other cities. The Hispanic and Arab immigrant populations fill up the city leagues, and vigorously support the local teams.

It's never going to challenge American-rules football, no, but it's starting to look like hockey looked 30 years ago.

I would have commented in this thread last night, but by the time I left the Richmond Club I was so pissed and hoarse from singing and yelling I could barely communicate my address to the taxi driver, and was in no state to operate a computer...

And I'm someone who's not really a soccer fan (sorry world, we already have too many games callled 'football' here) and who generally resists the lure of team sports even in such an utterly sports-obsessed town as Melbourne.

It was awesome! Tears of joy were shed! Our crappy national anthem was sung, badly but with (drunken) passion! Even my two New Zealand mates were singing along, which is something I will immensely enjoy reminding them of every single time I see them for the rest of their natural lives...

Rembrandt, we were at the same pub.

Ha.