Friday 20 January 2012

Fossie, Slater lead a dismal week

A week for reflection on matters round-ball. In Australia, a curious contretemps between former Socceroo team-mates Craig Foster and Robbie Slater. Both now long-time pundits on the game in Australia, they click their keyboards rather like they played their football - brash, gung-ho and a little raw. Foster this week peddled a well-worn theme of his, the disdain for anything from the mother country, or thereabouts, within the Aussie football context. This time it was Melbourne Victory appointee Jim Magilton in his sights. Foster, aided and abetted by flagging football warhorse Les Murray, saw Magilton's appointment as an unwanted pimple on the new face of Australian football - one which has progressively dispensed with its ties to our British past, in favour of more cosmopolitan influences.

Slater, also one not to mince his words, and having spent his English playing days at a slightly higher level than Foster, branded his former teammate as racist for airing such anti-British views. He also managed to throw in some recollection of a Socceroo incident from the distant past which somehow implicated Foster. Irrelevant and tawdry.

If matters football were rather scrappy locally, there was a week of similar untidiness globally. Pepe's stamp on Messi in the latest instalment of the El Classico in Spain, and a reinforcement of the polarity of English football these days - Chelsea's rather odd signing of three young brothers from Luton Town, and the sad near annulment of Darlington FC from the face of football altogether.

Maybe next week we can focus on the positives on the pitch!