I can never forget it, I had just moved to Japan about two weeks earlier, and this was my first day living in my new city. I went to the local gymnasium where they were showing the game on a big screen. The one foreigner in the room. The one splash of green and gold in a sea of Samurai Blue. There was a dude with a mega and another with drums going off the whole game.
I remember being so overawed by my surroundings, and feeling so terrible when Nakamura scored early in the game. The dudes on the drums and the guy with a megaphone ensured that the energy levels were high among everyone watching.
I was the only person going crazy when Australia scored…and then scored again, and again. It was the wildest feeling. After the game, the megaphone man came over and shook my hand. A local reporter saw it, and came running over to ask us to do it again for a picture.
I was interviewed by the local news station about the game. All I could blurt out was “SUGOI!” A few months later I was recognised in a bar as the “World Cup TV gaijin.”
After the game ended, I ran out to the payphone outside the gym and called home, everyone at home was as naturally hyped and crazy as I was. Just the coolest experience.
Best day of my life, though was an absolute wreck post-game. Having waited a lifetime to date for us to qualify, being one of the lucky ones to score tickets late in the piece through FFA, giving my boss an ultimatum to approve leave, coughing up somewhere in the vicinity of $15K for a month long piss-up, travelling all the way there and then having dreams crushed by that shitty opening goal… I was not prepared for purest joy that 3 goals in 8 minutes can bring.
Here’s the Aussie curva post-game, everyone seems to be having a grand time:
In there is my best mate chugging a beer like he don’t give a fuck, our other mate with the wig and camcorder, then me. Absolutely fucked, hands on head, tears streaming:
My memory was running out into the backyard when Cahill scored the second goal, and being immediately followed by my Border Collie, who was carrying a ball in his mouth. He understood!
Unpopular opinion - This endless effort to mythologise Nestory Irankunda is going to backfire badly sooner rather than later.
This bullshit about him being the second youngest Socceroo scorer after being allowed to take a penalty against Palestine is the worst example. I guarantee he wouldn’t ever be on the list of penalty takers in a competitive game. It was just a way to give him a goal he couldn’t score in free play so they could generate press releases and social media banging on about him.
He’s very good for his age and has great potential, but it needs to be allowed to happen rather than this artificial bullshit.
It was a competitive fixture - a World Cup qualifier
I get what you’re saying, but Yenghi and Taggart, Leckie and Boyle had all come off. We were 4-0 up, late in the game. It’s as good an opportunity as any to get a kid off his duck. I wouldn’t be surprised if the direction came from Arnold.
I think everyone knows his real test is ahead of him. Whether we even see him play for Australia again is probably about to be determined by how he responds to whatever new environment he’s going into.
Agree with that. Dont think it would have come from Arnold as hes to savy to let the hype take over. Agree that the constant salivating over him is too much though, although it seems to occur around any half decent youth players in the world rather than anything specific about our league
It might be good for him to go into the Bayern setup and disappear for a year amongst other really talented kids. Presumably he’ll play at Bayern 2 initially. Pavlesic the younger is there too.
Irankunda takes penalties for Adelaide and besides Stamatelopoulos being on, (and maybe Irvine) there was no other players on the pitch that would regularly take penalties - so not entirely sure who you are suggesting Irankunda took obvious penalty duties off there?
I’m going to disagree because as we are in the Asian confederation we are going to be playing in far flung places that either require alot of travel, the pitches aren’t going to be what alot of the players are used to, the refs are going to be different, the fans are going to be hostile, the weather will be all over the place, the players don’t play together much etc etc.
Point being is that World Cup qualifying takes a couple of years at a minimum so the wins aren’t always going to comprehensive or pretty & you can’t always play your game or your usual tactical setup. This is actually what I liked about Pim Verbeek even though everyone was screeching incessantly about the “style” during the qualification process.
The qualification process & the World Cup are two completely separate competitions which require two vastly different approaches due to all of the factors above so winning against Bangladesh in those conditions & winning against Palestine here in Straya also required a completely different approach.
I have no problem with grinding out ugly wins if it gets us to the World Cup.
Zero goals conceded in a full phase of qualification is an excellent claim. Particularly for those who remember us shitting ourselves at the back under Ange if the opposition had one speedy winger on the break
Either way, I’m not all that fussed. A lot of the regular takers were off and we were 4-0 up. There wasn’t anyone retiring soon etc to give it to and he is a good striker of the ball who does take some Adelaide free kicks.
Having waited a lifetime to date for us to qualify, being one of the lucky ones to score tickets late in the piece through FFA, giving my boss an ultimatum to approve leave, coughing up somewhere in the vicinity of $15K for a month long piss-up, travelling all the way there and then having dreams crushed by that shitty opening goal… I was not prepared for purest joy that 3 goals in 8 minutes can bring.
