yayah


What do you think about the FourFourTwo article Smeltz Goal Sinks Serbia?
SHANE Smeltz scored New Zealand's winner in a 1-0 triumph over Australia's Group D rivals Serbia - a match marred by crowd disturbances.

Have your say.

For selfish Australian loving reasons, it was awesome to see the hot blooded Serbian fans pile the mental pressure on the already vulnerable (upstairs) Serbian team. Plus the teams arrogance and lack of respect reveals how ill prepared they are to handle the difficulties that will face them in the month of June. This ain't going to be like qualifiers at home with pissant away games down the road! While Slavic teams are renowned for crumbling when it gets tough (eg: Croatia circa '06 and Yugolsavia '98), Australia and Germany have proven how well they can prepare for a tournament and punch above their weight. Meanwhile The Serbs are so close to self imploding and they haven't left the country yet... Brilliant!

well... continent.

good on you new zealand!!

good on you new zealand!!

Great result New Zealand, hopefully we can perform as well and Sebia play as badly in our group match!

Quaker - got it in one, spot on.

and before some of you Aussies start claiming "they didn't even have their first team out...." BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH.

they were only missing Ivanovic and Stankovic and maybe one more. Vidic was playing and Fallon was winning everything in the air and even set up the goal from beating the twat (Vidic).

NZ had first team players missing like Brown, Killen Macglinchey and had a 3 man defence that had never played together before. Reid-Nelsen-Smith

we did well and are only improving after every game.

watch out Italy !!!!!!!!

This is a great Result for us Serbia will lose lots of moral losing to NZ also it shws u that we can be the Serbs if the Kiwis can most of there 1st team played.

Well done NZ good results

Rebecca West (an English author and travel writer) once said that



Clearly the Serb fans hadn't heard that one before...

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Edited by Yet Another User Name: 30/5/2010 12:32:46 PM

Well done NZ! and well done smeltzy. He's always been a grea finisher. Watch out serbia the socceroos are coming!

Well this is making me feel alittle bit better about making it through our group at the World Cup.

I applaud the NZ result... and I was expecting someone to raise this as well. It kind of reminds me when English fans go on about the 3-1 loss to us as "we made 11 changes!!@#!@#" and expect that is some sort of defence. Australia was 2-0 up at half time against the FIRST CHOICE line up for England. New Zealand went 1-0 up after 22 minutes against the first team line up in that game. The 7 changes Serbia made surely weren't before then, were they?

Again, well done NZ. I have actually tipped you to get out of the group stage... kiss of death, perhaps.

I disagree with the idea that Balkan teams have weak mentalities. Quite frankly the idea is a little bit racist. Did Croatia finish 3rd at France 98' with a weak mind-set? Did Serbia top their qualification group because they are mentally fickle and weak?
The idea stems from the way the old Yugoslav teams, and to a lesser extent Serbia&Montenegro, failed to gel as cohesive units due to internal national divisions. Well that is now a bygone era.
Balkan teams, like all teams, sometimes lose games they shouldn’t. The only difference is that every time a Balkan team is upset people put it down to a so-called weak mentality while other teams are said to have just had an off-day.

Hey Sydneycroatia
What are ya gunna say about this result ya tosser? You have jawed off for weeks about how good the Serbs are and look at this pathetic result against ostensibly a New Zealand B Team. LOL at you dude big time, Big time. Great result for the Kiwis to stick it up ostensibly another completely overated team from Europe. All the best to New Zealand in the WC may this be the first of many scalps. Serbia dark horses for the WC no!! just white fairies!!

Yeah I was impressed at the All Whites improvements against Bakrain and Australia. And I won some money on today's game by backing the All Whites! They rock hard with some underrated players like Smeltz, Nelsen etc. They are like we were in 2006 and I wont be suprised to see them qualify for the round of 16. And I expect us to top our group against the odds, then to beat England 3-1 again in the round of 16. But anyway, crack on you Kiwis, up the ANZACs and come on Aussie! Oh, and fuck off Big Dukes, yeah the Yugoslavs are shit sportsmen and will never get anywhere unlike the Antipodeans who always punch above our weight in olympics, cricket, football, rugby, whatever. It's not racist because Serbs are the same race as Kiwis (white), it's just that Serbs aren't as good at football as Kiwis are. As today's result irrefutably demonstrates.

Good result to New Zealand.

Means nothing in regards to Australia's chances. Australia and Serbia were both outplayed by NZ and they deserved to win both. Just like our form against NZ will probably not be the standard in the cup, Serbia's wont either.

Don't get ahead of ourselves...

i hope everyone realises this means we'll get done 3-0 n new zealand peaked to early n had their one 'upset' win so im tipping they wont score a goal at the wc

Milan Jovanovic and Milos Krasic out wide

No Kamaryn, I think it does bear on Aussie chances. Just like the Kiwis were written off against Serbia and jsut like the Iraqis were written off in the last AFC Cup, we are written off against Germany. But we can beat them like the Kiwis beat Serbia because the truth is that any football team that is not from Europe, or is not Ivory Coast/Brazil/Argentina is underrated on the world stage. I expect the Koreans and USA to punch above their weight too.

you can miss whoever you like out wide but if you don't have the depth and the coach then you might get beat by indonesia or nz lol...

Gentlemen,
Although, taking nothing away from NZ. All these games are trials & experimental. Hence NZ must ask the question, where Serbia in 5th gear? Probably not, more like 2nd and the NZ, like against Australia, where in 5th gear. NZ must realise that Serbia and Australia where in cruse control & NZ where flat out. To Serbia and Australia the NZ match was a training run, a warm up for the big event. NZ are taking these games way more seriouse than they should. Still all our opinions will be sorted out when the "real" games begin. Yes NZ beat Serbia, but dont get too excited, the men are yet to be seperated from the boys.

I most of the second half of this game and NZ were fortunate not to concede a goal on a few occasions, but Smeltz's goal was well taken.




Didn't the All Whites beat Italy in a lead up game to last year's Confederations Cup?

Ivanovic, Stankovic, Krasic, jovanvoic, Lukovic - they didnt play at all

That's right Albundysfc - they are experimental matches. The Serbs experimented and failed. Perhaps it's them that have no plan B?

This friendly will be forgotten when the World Cup starts. Great moral boast for NZ though.

Ok. Pre-World Cup friendly, not really that much to get to happy about. Spain got lucky beating Saudi Arabia who couldn't beat Bahrain who New Zealand beat so does that mean Spain are going to struggle at the WC. No. It doesn't mean shit. Portugal couldn't beat Cape Verde does that mean they are going to flop at the WC. No.

People need to stop getting ahead of themselves and not worry about other teams pre-world cup friendlies and just worry about our own. We need to accept that all 3 teams in our group are going to cause us big problems and all 3 are quality teams not just put them down after 2 result.

some kiwis (bobbyR) needs to chill and realise that most aussies are actually supporting NZ in the world cup and hoping they do well.
obviously we'll be giving you shit when we play you..its called sport and rivalry. get used to it.

TBH I don't think Portugal will make it out of their group

Well that's on account of them having an extremely tough group that can go either way. My point is not to just judge someone's World Cup performance based on friendly performances. If we are to do that then Australia will struggle as well.