The Moot Point

Welcome to The Moot Point – the football blog about everything but nothing in particular.

I hope you enjoy it.


Holger the Great? Possibly.

After surviving the Dark Ages of Pim Verbeek, the Socceroos are certainly experiencing a Renaissance under Osieck.

It is truly wonderful to see the Socceroos once again playing like the Australia we know and love.

Last Wednesday morning’s win over Germany was no fluke.

The style of Osieck is in stark contrast to Verbeek’s as now Australia has someone who is much more in tune with our players, their capabilities and their playing style.

Ironically, of course, it was the disastrous game against Germany in last year’s World Cup that signalled the end had arrived for Verbeek even though technically he had already stated his intentions to move on before the tournament.

More of the same is definitely required in games that matter.


Mario Balotelli is an enigmatic character.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that the prodigious talent was plying his trade with Inter in the Serie A where he was regularly the victim of some terrible racial abuse and whistling by opposition supporters. Some of the incidents that Balotelli was subjected to were amongst the worst moments ever witnessed in Italian football.

Fast forward a couple of years to the present day and here we have Balotelli at Manchester City, in a new league with a new fan base but surprisingly with some real discipline issues.

He is still under the guidance of Roberto Mancini, his mentor at Inter in those nasty days when he was clearly the victim. However with his erratic behaviour on the field he is fast generating a reputation as someone who is clearly a liability for his side.

Let’s hope that Balotelli can sort himself out sooner rather later. It would be a real shame if he didn’t.

Maybe he can take leaf out of Antonio Cassano’s book – the former enfant terrible of Italian football who missed World Cups because of his lack of discipline – but who is now setting the world on fire again with AC Milan and the Azzurri.


Media Musings

I’ve never had the privilege of being a sports editor and as such, would never try telling professionals how to do their job. Yet despite my own shortcomings I was still surprised recently at the lack of football coverage.

Surely a major Sydney daily newspaper could find space for some football coverage in their sports section on a Saturday morning?

The Sydney Morning Herald may be only partially at fault given that the A-League season is over and that our game to some degree needs to generate its own interest, but to give football absolutely zero coverage is somewhat hard to fathom.

While on the subject of media coverage; if I hear or read another thing from Craig Foster regarding Barcelona this and Barcelona that I think I am going to scream. Yes, Craig is absolutely correct in his assertions and critiques of Barcelona but to go on and on about it incessantly is a bit over the top in my humble opinion.

May I suggest Craig finds a new hobby horse and a good starting point could be as follows: Discuss the malaise in Italian football.

There you go, that should keep him busy for a while!

Until next week… Enjoy the beautiful game.