Think I've found our marquee signing - 
http://www.empolichannel.it/maccarone-verso-laustralia-arriva-la-conferma-giochera-nel-brisbane-roar/

good player but is 38 years old !

Way too old IMO but if he does the job I won't complain.

good player but is 38 years old !

Translation - Massimo Maccarone in Australia. The news goes back a few days ago, but now comes the confirmation. The former captain of blue is preparing to sign with the Brisbane Roar team of the A series of overseas. The championship will begin in October, but next week the player should already reach the kangaroo land to sign the contract that will tie him to the Brisbane club.Read this article on: http://www.empolichannel.it/maccarone-verso-laustralia-arriva-la-conferma-giochera-nel-brisbane-roar/Copyright © gonews.it

Waz,I hope you are jesting when you say our midfield is all sorted?
At the moment we have a dads army of McKay,Holman and Kristensen,with,Pepper and Caletti as backup.No playmaker and noone with pace..If we get hit on counter attacks those guys will struggle.Hopefully we have more youth to step in,because you can guarantee the older guys will be injured at some time.
At the moment we have lost youthful first team players in Oar,Macca and Borello and we have replaced them with BKF(hot and cold),Gameiro(never played a full season)and if the reports are true a 38 yr old who has never played in our heat.
Lots of risks there and not the team to run all day or for a pressing game.
We could end up with one of the oldest teams in the league at this rate.

Lel. Boro legend.

@ crimsoncrusoe - "one of the oldest teams in the league" always wins the league. Plot out the average age of winning sides ...

Massimo Maccarone is a done deal apparently, Hooi arrives on Saturday as well ...

Rightio then ..I will trust that JA knows his stuff and these two work out well. I guess overseas players are always a gamble,no matter what their pedigree.
For those expecting a young marquee striker ?....will never happen. If a striker is young ...and good.... he won't ever be coming to our league. I am happy with Massimo if he can still perform Ok ...and looking at last years highlights ..he still looks the goods.
I guess the gamble is the heat and the "Ist year acclimatization" curse that many foreign players suffer .

So this morning I typed 'brisbane roar' into the twitter search and then scrolled down and found the original article I posted. And now this.

Goes to show how easy it is to uncover a rumour.

Hooi is more of a concern to be honest, even an aging Italian should be able to score ten goals plus D'Aggers and Gomerio can back him up, but if Hooi isn't the real deal we will struggle.

You mentioned he was due in on Saturday...I'm assuming it's almost a done deal? Agree he's very crucial to us.

@BRFC

that's what I was told this morning, Roar wanted to announce the two together knowing they get a backlash over age but it leaked out in Italy overnight. So Hooi lands on Saturday, presumably subject to a medical but should be on the books next week.

People will always complain no matter who Brisbane brought in, young, old or middle aged, no one knows how a player will go. 

Waz,
Really can you back up ,that the oldest team wins the league?I have never heard of that before.Did we win our titles with pensioners?Surely there is an age limit?
Key experienced players are certainly important ,but when you have too many old players you get a lot of good and bad performances,based on lack of physical ability to get up for two games in a row.In the heat it's tougher.
Considering we have potentially North,Avram,BKF,Kristensen ,McKay and now this Italian all close to retirement next year,this doesn't look like the club have a long term strategy.I hope i am wrong,but from the days of Ange and his energetic young side attacking in defence and finishing over the top of other teams,we have certainly ended up at a different place.

Well spotted! Should be a reasonable prospect and one would think he should have it over the average A League defender. Depends on if his grey cells are still up to it.

Ah ok.

So we should expect an announcement early next week then?

I said in the other post we could have 7 to 8 of our first team players over the age of 30. really the two FB and maybe one wingspot and time to time the CB.

Anyway i thought the golden average age around 26-29 mark for a team to win a tournament. 

Just really disappointed from going from a team of young prospects to a dads army in a blink of an eye. There is no speed in this team. I just can't see how we are going to play the brisbane way this season. 

@ crimsoncrusoe

Not "the oldest team wins the league" but always "one of the oldest" - be interesting to plot out the average age of title winning sides but I think you'd find the trend is up not going down.

Sydneys starting XI last season averaged 29.36 with 6 players 32 and over and if I listed our Roars starting XI with our new senior marquee it would be 31.09 with 7 over 32.

Start Young over Theo and it's 30.6

Start either D'aggers or Calletti and it's 29.5 with 6 over 30

Start either one of those two and young and the average age falls below SFCs.

There's only Theo (36) and our new marquee (38) that raise eyebrows.

Roar were called "Dads Army" last year and finished 3rd - age rise all JAs done is replace a 37 year old Broich with a 38 year old.

Waz,Comparing to SFC is really an issue.If you play like SFC you can have virtually have a team with zimmer frames.Is that the way we are heading?
I hope not ,SFC. for me are the worst team to watch .
Somewhere we have lost vision of what football we want to play and are heading down the road of John the pragmatist.

If Roar dont play a counter attacking format they will lose, the last two champions have played defensively and counter attacked (Adelaide and SFC), that is the style BRFC need to play to keep up, Ange's style is outdated as even he admits. To say Maccarone needs a zimmer frame is rather an uninformed insult to his abilities, he is only 38 and teh chucks on here going on about this probably couldnt even muster the energy to run out of the Suncorp tunnel

Craig Moore has confirmed the Brisbane Roar will NOT offer Elson Hooi a contract, according to fox sports.

Guess those Germans have got it all wrong then.

New injury replacement for Bowles rumoured to be Mitchell Oxborrow

Fullback,I agree with the current squad Brisbane cant play a proactive high press tika taka style or hard taka.But counter attack requires pace up front,so that's why the SFC strangulation method is most likely.Although maybe the three at the back flavour so popular is a possibility.But highly risky with wing back options we have .
Sadly the SFC style is ok against HAL standard teams ,but as Liverpool zimmer framers composite team and Arsenal showed ,against good teams you end up strangling yourself and struggle to get a shot on target.

Pretty much confirmed

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4800784/oxborrow-set-to-roar-back-into-a-league/

But but but we had a bus load of talent coming through.

Roar coaches and a bus load of talent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtsTbX85lgo

@ clivesundies

Why are you so bitter n twisted towards Roar? What happened?

If D'Aggers (19), Ingham (18), Brady (21), O'Toole (19), Bilic (19), and Calletti (18) aren't enough evidence of youth coming through, that's 25% of the squad and there's only two of them we haven't seen much of yet.

If you think Roar should keep stuffing the squad with kids for the sake of it then you're kinda missing the point of youth development aren't you? They play if they're good enough which is regular at Roar (this week we had Sydneys youth pleading for game time, when Victory came up last season pleading they had to play the kids they sat them on the bench lol).

You're close to Roar, I can tell by several of your comments, you must have seen the latest backroom additions in the coaching team which is better than what went before?

I don't get your cynicism?

The Roar Supporters Federation will host Drew Sherman for a Fan Forum on Friday August 4th where he will outline Roars Academy program. Details:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1553815018017498&id=1361064053959263

There's a lot of detail but we saw the presentation today and it's pretty interesting; the event will be held at QUTs Sports Arena at Kelvin Grove which will host the academy up to U16 and Logan will host up to U19.