Yes, this is going to be a rant.
My mate and I went along to the see Australia vs Paraguay at the SFS on saturday. An impressive 1-0 victory, with the team playing attacking, pressing football under the new coach, Holger Osieck.
In the second-half, Australia really took the game to the technically-gifted Paraguay team and justly got the winning goal. After the goal, the game entered it's most exciting phase with Paraguay trying to equalise and Australia holding them out. I admit, I was on the edge of my seat and truly absorbed.
Until...
Most of the crowd started doing the mexican wave. WTF!
Instead of watching a really wonderful tight football game between two teams placed in the Top 25 nations in the world, twenty-thousand dickheads decide it's better to watch each other stand up and sit down! There seemed to be little understanding of the quality of football they were seeing. No, it wasn't Barcelona vs Real Madrid, but clearly the Paraguay team (quarter-finalist at the last World Cup) and the Australian team deserved much more attention than this.
I'm pleased to say the wave stopped after a few minutes, but it made me wonder whether we deserve to win the bidding rights to the 2022 World Cup if the best we can offer is this.
Let me finish by saying, Australia under Holger Osieck is a much better team than the defensive rubbish Pim Verbeek dished up. And he even seems capable of smiling and telling a joke.
