They had Paul Okon for the first Australia game, shouldn't he be off coaching somewhere? guy is a twat and some bird who has no idea about football at all.

The fact that an international tournament isn't played on FTV live or at least play all of the matches(including non socceroos) on delay is an absolute joke no wonder FIFA didn't give us the world cup.

Yet they beat us a few months ago. They also won the Gulf Cup which is a big deal for those nations. They had some good results for a joke team last year.

On top of that they are the current Under 19 Asian Cup champions winning it last year with a strong squad made up of Euro based players.

I think the standard of play from some of the Gulf state teams, such as UAE and Oman, have improved from what it was a few years ago. Qatar, of course, is still a joke- a team full of imports and they still can't play.

Jordan-Iraq was a throwback to the bad old style of Asian football- poor finishing, awkward challenges, endless falling over and rolling around. The Saudis, too, gave a classic demonstration of poor finishing.

Japan is still the benchmark- even though they should have been able to score more than four against a poor Palestine. Hopefully they were just pacing themselves.

Stan Lazaridis, who is very good, Ogger and someone else who whose name escapes me.

I haven't watched ABC's coverage. Who do they have as their 'experts' ?

Zelic is the one I don' t like at all. The only panellist on SBS, ABC and Fox I don' t like. However, he has been done to death in other threads.

I think with some of the West Asia teams, who know each other so well, in games where a loss will make it difficult to qualify for the next round, there have been some very tense games.




However, the Iran /Bahrain ( was it Bahrain?) game was a fabulous spectacle.=d>






Edited by Decentric: 13/1/2015 02:40:16 PM

Iraq v Jordan was dull, but was fun in the stands especially with large groups of Iraqi supporters on both main stands.

I think one of the main reasons the Asian cup is becoming a more enjoyable event for me now is we know alot of these teams.

Bahrain, Japan, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Uzbekistan ect... We have faced each other in qualifying for 8 years now and knowing a bit about them makes watching the games great.

Edited by glenn - a-league mad: 13/1/2015 01:15:43 PM

Fox is a lot more superior to SBS or ABC for coverage. Quality discussion and they also have some personality behind it. Even Zelic as a commentator although occasionally sounding out of his element is great to listen to. He seems generally excited and can give some good insight.

Back on topic, I have been enjoying it, however the Iraq Jordan game was very dull, we are really lucky the expats and tourists are propping up the crowds which have been good.

Go the Socceroos tonight :cool:

Mate, I have just moved. Getting Foxtel moved was a nightmare. ](*,) They are useless, but we've just managed to reinstall it by employing private contractors.

On ABC/SBS there is very little coverage when we were relying on FTA..

Foxtel are showing every game. I'm really impressed with the panel of Aloisi and Pim Verbeek as the specialist coaches, Bozza ( with Aloisi) as the former high level player/s and Adam Peacock as a presenter. Their shows on analyses of games have been excellent.=d>

Yea its been good, Iran impressed me.

Would be nice if it was on tv...

One thing that is apparent, is that when the West Asian teams play each other, they know each other's games very well.

I'm trying to think of who UAE played?

I sometimes get confused between Qatar, UAE and Bahrain.

UAE has impressed me a lot. a real darkhourse for the competition . Ahmed Khalil, Ali Mabkhout and of course Omar Adbulrahman are all quality players.

Don't know about others, but I'm enjoying watching teams from across Asia.

Compared to the HAL , there is a greater diversity of football style. The technical quality of many Asian teams/players is probably quite high high compared to the Aussies in the HAL. Conversely, for the majority they are probably not as well coached and tactically savvy.

It is good to get away from being Australiacentric.

I think we are in a region with potential for fast improvement in quality of teams/players.

If we can attain the technical quality of our opponents, and they can get closer to our tactical quality and coach education of Aussie coaches, things augur well for the future.