No Luke at Wembley

Day -645. WorldCup2018

Ah, silence. After a few days of qualifiers all over the world it's time to relax and look forward to the next batch in October.

Malta's new superstar Luke Gambin of Barnet FC, won't got his fairytale appearance for Malta at Wembley against England on October 8th. After his sending off against Scotland, Fifa informed the Malta FA that he would be summoned to a disciplinary hearing. Poor Luke. A momentary rush of blood to the head and his story for the grandchildren is ruined.

Around the qualifiers

Day -646 WorldCup2018

I very often think that I enjoy World Cup qualifying more than the actual finals. This is especially true for the last round of qualifying when there are multiple matches going on with a number of combinations of possible results that will produce qualifying teams and others that narrowly miss out.

Today is by no means the final round anywhere but in CONCACAF the final matches of the fourth round are being played. Six teams move on to the final round. I am watching Canada-El Salvador as I write this. Canada need to win but they also need Mexico to beat Honduras and the combined goal difference has to be plus five in Canada's favour. Sadly, it's not looking too good for my second home country. At 2-0 to Canada with 15 minutes left there was hope that even with the other match still at 0-0, Canada could score a couple more and hope for a late Mexican winner. But El Salvador just scored and now it looks like the inevitable will happen: another disappointing qualifying campaign will end with Canada nowhere near qualifying. Four minutes left that should have been 3-1. Ah well.

No such negative feelings amongst Brazilian fans today. They beat Colombia 2-1 and seemed to have really turned their campaign around since their Olympic team won that emotional and historic gold medal. And they have a new coach.

In other exciting non-final day news Albania and Macedonia came back to play the last 13 minutes of their match, abandoned because of torrential rain yesterday. And the 13 minutes made a difference as Albania scored a winner.

And Syria. Oh Syria. Keeping track of where they are going to play their home matches is as difficult as it probably is for their coach to keep track of his players. Up until last week they were meant to be playing their "home" match against South Korea in Macau. Then, with just a few days to go, the Macau football association announced that a consensus was not reached with the Syrian association. It was not said but it can be assumed that money was the issue. So a new venue was needed. The original hosts, Lebanon, were mentioned but the Koreans were not happy at the prospect of having to find a flight to the Middle East at such late notice. Finally, Malaysia were chosen as the hosts and Syria won their first point in a 0-0 draw. It is unknown if Malaysia will become Syria's permanent home. It will be fun waiting to see where they play next.

Canada's out. Done for another 4 years. A 3-1 win was not enough. It's pretty sad as a fan when that moment hits that you realise your country will definitely not be at the World Cup. I never had that problem with Malta, but I always hope Canada will do it. But just like any good Canadian, or person living in Canada, I will just follow my other team in Russia. Now let's hope they qualify.

Kosovo

Day -647. WorldCup2018

Amongst all today's fixtures in European qualifying the most significant was the debut of Fifa's newest member, Kosovo, the country that is not really a country. Six players were cleared by Fifa just a few hours before kick off to play for Kosovo having represented other countries in the past. Valon Berisha was one of them. He played 19 times for Norway and scored the equaliser today in Kosovo's 1-1 draw in Finland.

Tomorrow another new non-country country play their first World Cup match. Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory of 30,000 people, will probably be nowhere near as strong as Kosovo and limiting the number of goals conceded will be their objective.

Malta-Scotland: live updates

Day -648. WorldCup2018

Part 1
How to "watch" a football match on social media. Not only can I not be in Malta to watch Malta-Scotland, I am also nowhere near a tv or computer. So all my updates will come from Twitter, Facebook and BBC online updates.
Match started with me driving. A quick stop just before kick off and another stop 10 minutes later. Terrible. Walked into a mall and Scotland just scored. Snodgrass. What a goal but did he mean it, says the BBC. I don't care. They scored. I used to sometimes have to turn away from a tv because I couldn't stand watching. Now I have the fear of the next update on twitter. Hope it's a good one.....

Part 2
Yessss!!!!! In the time I wrote that last post Malta equalised. This is going to be hard to "watch". Back to twitter.

Part 3
Now the wifi's not working. I didn't want it anyway. Oh this unreliable technology! Give me a radio any day. Wifi turned off. Back to updates.

Part 4
And I can breathe. Halftime All this switching between twitter, facebook and bbc is exhausting. Back to the car now, but a passenger now. Scottish fans on twitter say Scotland are terrible, embarrassing to be drawing against Malta. Pity there aren't Maltese tweeters. Want to hear the other side. I think it's amazing. Now I hope Malta can keep it at 1-1 and score a winner in the last minute.

Part 5
Deflated. Sitting in the car, not enjoying the view, and Scotland score. Just read tweet that Chris Martin doesn't deserve to be playing for Scotland. Then he scores. Typical. Between searching for updates, news of the goal came from my Scottish friend, huge Rangers fan but caring less about Scotland today than I am.

Part 6.
Losing all enthusiasm for this project. 1-3, Malta down to 10 players. Almost at destination, with stop for now much needed beers on the way.

Part 7
Bbc baffled by the penalty decision. "Was never a penalty". Even harder to take.

Part 8, maybe?
It's 4-1 now. This is terrible. Malta don't have many of these embarrassing results anymore. Against England maybe. But not Scotland. I guess I can say at least I wasn't there. All excitement I had 2 hours ago is now gone.

Part something....I don't care anymore.
1-5. Can we stop now, please? Car ride almost over. Malta coach's job almost over?

Part 10?
And I didn't end there. Another player sent off before the end, our English Malteser Luke Gambin. 5-1 and two players sent off. Right now I don't think it could be worse against England at Wembley in October.

Part 11.
Nightmare match ended. Silver lining if there could be one. Just enjoyed Toronto's move into the 21st century: finally being able to buy food and beer in one stop. Time to forget the 1-5.

Malta-Scotland: part 6, the memories

Day -649. WorldCup2018

Tomorrow while I will probably be driving on a highway outside of Toronto, Malta and Scotland will kick off their World Cup qualifying campaign. I've been looking forward to this for a while not just because it gives me some real material to talk about, or because of the excitement of Malta being in Scotland and England's group, but also out of nostalgia brought on by not being able to attend.

I have not lived in Malta a number of years and have made my home elsewhere, but when I do remember the days when it was home a big part of those memories belong inside Ta' Qali stadium. It is no cliche to say that I can still smell the cigarette smoke wafting through the air while sitting in a half empty stand listening to the bad jokes and the inane comments about players' habits and the reasons why we are losing again. For sure, every set of supporters in every country have their style and their peculiarities, but in your own country they are more significant because you understand them. I will never try explain the comment about the Portuguese goalkeeper looking like a "duster" that came from behind me many years ago. It just won't do justice to the humour of the comment.

That match against Portugal, by the way, was one of those oh-so-close 1-0 defeats, greeted by a mixture of relief that it wasn't five or six nil and disappointment that we were so close to finally getting a positive result. But the again 0-1 was kind of positive. Ah. The life of a supporter of perennial minnow and underdog.

And there were many more stories. I was there for numerous 0-5s, 0-6s but I also witnessed the epic 2-3 against West Germany. I remember the excitement of rushing home from school to go see the Rijkaard/Van Basten/Gullit Dutch team and experiencing the contradictory emotions of wanting to be awed, expecting them to be amazing, yet feeling cheated by Malta's performance that Van Basten could score 5 goals as they beat us 8-0. Equally terrible was arriving 14 minutes late for the match against Sweden and sitting down just as Ibrahimovich scored his third goal. His third. In the 14th minute. He scored one more and we lost 7-0.

I was also there for the loudest cheer I have ever heard at the stadium: as the Maltese players came onto the pitch to play Spain. It was a shout of revenge in the air, revenge for the infamous 1-12. We lost 2-0 but didn't make it easy for them. As we didn't for Italy, losing 2-1. And we missed a penalty. But it was almost more exciting that if we were to score just one goal that it came from open play and not a penalty.

And there was the fun of being there to witness the Republic of Ireland supporters celebrating qualifying for the first ever World Cup. The match? We lost 2-0. But nobody really cared. We had never seen supporters like that.

There was the mini excitement of leading 1-0 at half time against Croatia who a few months earlier had played in the World Cup semifinal. In the end we lost 4-1 but that was an enjoyable half time.

And I was there on an early Spring evening, with probably 300 other people, to watch us beat Jordan 3-1. Jordan. Yes. So what. We won. And I was there. That was one of those matches where I thought I should receive a special mention from the Malta FA for being a loyal supporter. Who would go to watch Malta play Jordan, my friends would say.

There were many hours spent laughing at the helplessness of our team, with friends (one fellow long suffering one in particular who made all the trips there more enjoyable) and father and brothers. There were also many matches watched by myself when the being there was a wonderful experience which brought joy to me and could not be explained to most of my friends. It was my place to go, where I had my fun listening to the men around me arguing not about the match in front of them but what they were listening to on their radios, commentary from Italy or England.
It therefore goes without saying that I will miss being there tomorrow. There is an organised supporters group now which adds to the fun, and the tickets are a little bit more expensive. But there will still be many of the same characters who were there 30 years ago. And they will still be watching Malta, and complaining about how bad they are, and throwing out their best English swear words at the Scottish players. And they, like I a few thousand kilometres away, will still be hoping for that rare win

Malta-Scotland: part 5, the adopted home country

Day -650. WorldCup2018

Only 2 more sleeps until the European World Cup qualifying starts and more importantly before Malta play Scotland. A home win, followed by a draw against England at Wembley in October, that will be a decent start. Malta, the surprise package in this round of qualifying.

Today, and right now, it's CONCACAF qualifying. As much as I would like Canada, my adopted country, to be in Russia it's looking more like the impossible dream after a 2-1 loss in Honduras. And with El Salvador winning 1-0 in the first half against Mexico right now, the required second place in the group looks even harder. It'll probably be another World Cup of Canadians supporting their other team: their country of birth or that of their parents.

My country of birth, despite my optimism (laughable and misguided) will not be in Russia. But a nice little win on Sunday would feel like a World Cup win.

Malta-Scotland; part 4, the excitement from afar

Day -651 WorldCup2018

Since I'm not there it's a fun substitute reading the Tartan Army forums about the Scottish supporters in Malta, or on their way to Malta for Sunday's match. There is talk of bars to meet, seats on buses to get to the stadium and, in a nice touch, a collection amongst the supporters for a local charity. It'll be fun in the stadium on Sunday, something not seen since Malta hosted Turkey a few years ago. The then newly formed supporters group did a great job of drumming up interest, and drawing crowds, by drawing on history and the attempted Turkish invasion of Malta in the 16th century. There's no need for anything similar to generate enthusiasm for Scotland's visit. It's only Scotland, and they haven't exactly been world beaters recently (or even World Cup qualifiers) but there is something exciting and glamorous for Maltese football fans to be playing a British team. Add in 5,000 Scottish supporters and it's going to be a great atmosphere.

Russia 2018 qualifiers started again today in Asia and South America. In the only surprise in Asia, Japan lost at home to the United Arab Emirates. Syria didn't have a fairy tale start to their first participation in round 3 of qualifying, losing 1-0 to Uzbekistan.

Lionel Messi returned from his very short lived retirement to score the only goal, via a big deflection off a defender, as Argentina beat Uruguay. But the biggest news out of all today's matches was Brazil's 3-0 , in Ecuador. Given their poor results recently, and a new coach, a draw would have been seen as a positive outcome. But it's great to see that the positivity from the Olympic win has carried over to the World Cup team. And the scorers today? Neymar and Gabriel Jesus. Both of them were instrumental in the Olympic victory and the question now is when are they are going to have an off season? I may have complained in the past about highly paid footballers moaning about not having a rest, but these two have been going strong since the beginning of last season. And next week it will be back to Barcelona, and Palmeiras for Garbriel before a move to Manchester City in January.
Neymar and Brazil is all wonderful to watch and read about. But it's the big match in Malta on Sunday that I am really looking forward to.