Iceland, oh Iceland

Day -616. WorldCup2018

We're off! Two days of warm-up qualifiers before the big Saturday event at Wembley Stadium started today.

Saudi Arabia's "heaving, abusive crowd" didn't do enough to earn a win for the team. They actually needed to come back twice to draw 2-2 with Australia. The big winners in Asia today were Syria. They beat World Cup 2050 winners China 1-0, in China. Unbelievably, Syria are in a very good position to at least be a third place team in their group and earn a play off spot.

In South America, Brazil continued their magical form after their Olympic gold medal. They beat Bolivia 5-0 and the transformation since that emotional Rio win is quite impressive.

In Europe, at 90 minutes of the Iceland-Finland match I was ready to start the "told you so" conversation. "Iceland were just a flash in the pan, it won't last. Maybe Finland will be the Iceland of Russia 2018". 90 minutes: Iceland-Finland 1-2. 91 minutes: 2-2. 95 minutes: Iceland-Finland 3-2. "Maybe Iceland have a good chance of qualifying for Russia. Finland? Nah, they're not good enough."

Thirty-six hours to go. Gareth Southgate, I hope your boys are shaking in their boots. Michael Mifsud did it at Old Trafford. He is ready to go one better at Wembley.

WC Qualifying.

Day -617 WorldCup2018

Hooray for the return of qualifying! There are matches in Asia, Europe and South America over this Fifa mandated long, very long, weekend of international football. I call it a weekend because it includes Saturday and Sunday but try asking your boss for a long weekend that includes Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday.

(This is about the last thing I do every night and how I have the time and energy to discuss, with myself, what constitutes a weekend is really beyond me).

A stand out match in Asia is Saudi Arabia-Australia, both winners of the first two matches in this third round of qualifying. According to The Age newspaper, "A heaving crowd, steamy conditions and a determined opponent await the Socceroos in Saudi Arabia." And: "neither the weather nor the abuse from the stands will deter anyone in the team". Australians seem to have an issue with loud, obnoxious crowds and extreme temperatures. Clearly, their footballers have never played football in.....Australia.

One bit of news that needs not be in the news this end-of-week, beginning-of-next week round of qualifiers is where Syria will play their home matches. They play two matches away before hoping that Malaysia don't change their minds about hosting them on November 15th.

The huge, yes, massive, clash in Europe is between Italy and Spain. It is incredible to think that come November 2017 one of these teams will be in the play-offs to reach Russia. That is unless Albania or Macedonia slip in there ahead of one of them. It makes you wonder about the seeding when you see Italy and Spain in the same group and others have the likes of Belgium, Greece and Bosnia battling for first place, or Denmark, Poland, Montenegro and Romania, or Wales, Austria and Ireland in a couple of other groups.

Of course, as I will harp on about for the next three days, the only match that really matters for me is Malta playing England on Saturday at 12 noon (for me, 5pm in England, 6pm in Malta). Any fan always prays for an upset, as unlikely as it may seem. At the very least, as England deal with their wasted t-shirts and Mr. Too Nice new (temporary) manager, all I hope for is that this time the ball crosses the England goal line, and I don't just mean between the posts. It will be a huge improvement from Malta's last visit to Wembley in 1971.

Golden Goal!

Day -618. WorldCup2018

In another of my moments of comparing World Cup football to other sports, I really feel that Fifa need to reintroduce the golden goal. That's sudden death to the un-knowing. This comes after watching the Toronto Blue Jays (that's baseball to the eqaully un-knowing football fans) win their one-off, win or bust, playoff game in extra innings (extra time, kind of).

One of the most famous World Cup golden goals was South Korea's winner against Italy in 2002. Critics said that it made teams play defensively because nobody wanted to lose, but the tension generated by the prospect of suddenly winning or losing when a goal was scored was excitement in itself. I was a baseball sceptic up until last year. But at times, especially in the playoffs the excitement is unparallelled. Fifa could well do with adding something to stop losing first time football watchers after they sit through Costa Rica and Greece play a terribly dull, "we don't want to lose" 0-0 draw at the World Cup.

When Fifa eliminated the golden goal in 2004 the headline on Fifa's website was: "Footballing world cheers end of golden goal". The footballing world were coaches and Italian newspapers who were still bitter about the loss in Korea. As much as I used to find it hard to agree with North American sports leagues, I think they have it right when they are obsessed with every game having a winner, a draw rarely exists....except in Major League Soccer.

And there's RDM on his bike

Day -619. WorldCup2018

It was not a good day for Italian football managers in England. Roberto di Matteo and Francesco Guidolin were sacked by Aston Villa and Swansea respectively. Di Matteo was no surprise and Guidolin was,well, no surprise either. It's hard for it to be a surprise when the club chairman is out meeting prospective managers before sacking the man in charge. And lo and behold, Guidolin was sacked in one breath and Bob Bradley hired in the next.

Bob Bradley becomes the first American coach in the Premier League. Will his success in the past with the USA team translate to a club in Wales?

As for Aston Villa it just continues the interesting run that's been going on for a few years now. Nobody will be getting excited about the new man. Villa fans are quite sick of false new dawns.

Poch 1 Pep 0

Day -620. WorldCup2018

So the Poch beat Pep today. Tottenham ended Pep's 100% start to his career in England. Will Pep panic? Probably not. Will he send out the signal for someone to go fetch Yaya Toure? Probably not yet.

In England-Malta news Adam Lallana is injured and was not included in England's squad for the World Cup qualifiers against Malta and Slovenia. Gareth Southgate picked his first squad and, as much as I joked about anybody being able to manage England against Malta and still win, so could Southgate probably have closed his eyes and pointed to 22 players off a list of all the footballers in England and still guaranteed a victory. Except if he did that he may have picked a Brazilian, Spanish and French team.

Come on Malta. Prove me wrong. You know I'm only belittling our chances so that anything less than a good hiding will be a welcome surprise.

RDM better get his bike ready

Day -621. WorldCup2018

Big news from the EFL Championship today. Aston Villa got fed up of chasing the record for most consecutive draws and since it was too much effort to go for a win they allowed Preston to stroll to a 2-0 win.

The Villa fans are also pretty fed up and it's becoming a very common theme. After demanding the owners got rid of the last manager, who replaced the manager before him because the fans insisted he was sacked, who in turn was brought in because the one before was, yes, hounded out by the fans (and there might have been one more) the fans have now had enough of Roberto Di Matteo. A few years ago a manager's job with Chelsea fell into RDM's lap, together with a pretty decent team put together by the previous manager. That Chelsea team, maybe driven by anger at the club owner, Roman Abramovich, for giving them RDM went on to win the Champions League. RDM, thereafter, became known as a Champions League winning manager. And he proceeded to get sacked and has done nothing since. The Champions League winning manager cannot motivate a team he spent a lot of his boss's money on to win at Preston, or Barnsley, or home to Brentford, or Huddersfield.

The most unsurprising news of the break for World Cup qualifiers next week will be that RDM will be looking for something else to do with his life. And in the un-reasonable world of football the same football fans who agreed that Sam Allardyce had to be fired because of that thing he did with those blokes from the newspaper who pretended to be somebody else will now be happy to have the scheming, "how much money can I make on the side" Big Sam come in and lead Villa back to the big time.

Instead of figuring out how to outplay Malta at Wembley, Allardyce could be researching Burton Albion's strengths and weaknesses. Not much difference, you would probably say. And, unless, he does indeed get banned by the FA, it is not a far fetched idea. Ridiculed by almost the whole of England last week, adored in half of Birmingham next week, it's not that outrageous. It happens to English footballers after every World Cup.

Those t-shirts and my t-shirt

Day -622. WorldCup2018

Did you hear the story about the 4,000 t-shirts that the English FA planned to hand out to supporters at the England-Malta match next week but are now in the bin/garbage/trash (I never know who's reading this)? The t-shirts had a quote from Allardyce on his first day on the job: "The journey starts with us all pulling together."

As sad as I am about the FA's wasted money, I wonder if they, or The Telegraph's fake far east investors, or Allardyce himself (for being so greedy) will consider compensating me for the t-shirt I had printed for my fantasy trip to Wembley:
"Big Sam: Watch out! Norway nailed Ron! Iceland froze Roy! Malta will make you cross!"

I may even have to ask the FA for my money back for my flight and match ticket. A big part of the attraction was going to be watching Sam's nicotine gum chewing get more furious, the furrow on his brow get deeper, and the shouting at his players get more incomprehensible as Schembri of Boavista, Muscat of Arezzo and Mifsud of Valletta run rings around Stones of Manchester City and Smalling of Manchester United. Gareth Southgate may be a tad less easy to wind up, unless somebody mentioned a missed penalty.

Seeing as my crowdfunding comment the other day did not generate any positive response, the FA may not have to refund what was indeed just a fantasy trip. I'm still holding out that the Malta FA Wil choose to reward one of their top supporters with a trip to Wembley.

This has been played many times over since 1981 but since I mentioned it, it's an excuse to play this classic commentary moment again. I just can't wait for the Maltese equivalent of.