What a relief! We get a break from talk of Fifa and World Cups and get some countries playing to qualify for a Fifa World Cup. Politics takes a back seat for the next few days and football is on. Yes, we can dream.
While eight European countries are involved in play-offs for the final four spots in next year's Euros, there are World Cup qualifying in all the other continental confederations, except for Oceania.
Africa is in the second round, with the two leg elimination matches starting today. Zambia and Mozambique got narrow 1-0 wins over Gabon and Sudan respectively. The majority of matches in this round are quite mismatched on paper with wins for the bigger, more established nations expected to be a formality. But supporters of Comoros are surely allowed to dream of a win against Ghana. Comoros have never actually won a World Cup match. They drew the two legs of their first round encounter and advanced on away goals. The same can be said of Liberia, as they attempt to topple the Ivory Coast, one of the more successful African teams recently.
In Asia the much discussed, on and off again, repeatedly rescheduled match between Saudi Arabia and Palestine was played in Jordan on Monday and finished 0-0. This was Saudi Arabia's first dropped points after four wins but, more importantly, there was no further political fall-out.
The big match of the weekend is the Argentina-Brazil clash in Buenos Aires on Thursday. On top of the long standing rivalry there is added incentive for both teams after a somewhat shaky start to qualifying, especially for Argentina who have only one point after 2 matches.
The CONCACAF region starts it's fourth round group phase. It makes you think how Europe can get through their qualifying in about twenty months, yet the North, Central American and Caribbean teams are at Round 4 when the Europeans are a year away from starting. Anybody attending football matches in Canada and the U.S.A. will know that starting times are usually a guide. Turn up for a match at 6.45pm for a 7pm start (as stated on your ticket, on TV, online) and you will probably have some sort of pre-game show starting at 7pm, followed by a grand entrance of the teams, some fireworks maybe and a cheerleaders' show and at about 7.12pm the match will start. Seeing as these qualifying matches are World Cup matches and Fifa probably doesn't stand for these approximate start times, Canada-Honduras is listed on fifa.com as starting at 19.08 and the Americans kick-off at 18.10. Guatemala have also joined in on the odd kick-off time fun with their match listed at 19.06. Of course, the Americans and Canadians are still carrying on with their false advertising to the local fans. Canadasoccer.com has kick-off for 7pm. The Americans are more creative. Fifa were probably told 18.30 but ussoccer.com has them starting at 18.30. The American way, I guess. You got to make sure everybody on TV is watching all the commercials.
So a super long weekend on football ahead. No talk of corruption, bribes, Fifa presidential elections. But what's that that happened in Istanbul today? Surely a friendly match between Jordan and Malta was just that, a meaningless encounter between two teams preparing for more important future battles. So why are the President of the Maltese FA, Norman Darmanin Demajo and Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, President of the Jordanian FA sitting so cozily in those comfy armchairs, at a football match? Prince Ali is a candidate for Fifa president and is out there looking for votes. Darmanin Demajo is the President of an association who's previous president is part of an alleged vote-buying scandal by the World Cup bid committee of Germany 2006. But even though there is the temptation to look for a story here, at the moment it sadly/happily looks like there is nothing untoward. Prince Ali said it was Darmanin Demajo who was the "catalyst behind his decision" to contest the presidential election in May, the one which Blatter won before stepping down.
Prince Ali told the UEFA congress in March: "I am particularly grateful to a colleague who visited Jordan one year ago and came up with a concept to unify FIFA’s work in this field. Thank you Norman (Darmanin Demajo). I want to translate your vision into reality.” And Darmanin Demajo annouced that the Maltese FA is firmly behind Prince Ali for this next election. This friendly match was a invitation from Prince Ali to the Maltese FA, to show their solidarity.
So we can move along, there looks like their is nothing to see here, apart from two men sitting in armchairs in a football stadium in Istanbul. And the men behind them thought they had snagged the comfy, VIP seats.
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