NEXT STOP GERMANY

 

 

It's over, it's over, the World Cup qualifiers are over, winners head to Germany and losers stay home and watch the show on TV. So what happened?

Well, the first stop is Sydney where Australia were up against Uruguay with the South Americans coming in 1-0 up from the first leg. However Aussie Parma midfielder Mark Bresciano gave his country what would have been a winner over 90 minutes and still sent the game into extra time. Extra time became penalties...and you had to feel for the Aussie fans at this point. Harry Kewell scored for Oz, Dario Rodriguez's kick for Uruguay is saved by Mark Schwarzer, Lucas Neil scores for Oz, Gustavo Varela scores for Uruguay, Tony Vidmar scores for Oz, Fabian Estoyanoff scores for Uruguay, Mark Viduka misses...only for Schwarzer to save Marco Zalayetta's following kick(meaning that Viduka owes him big time). Then John Alosi sealed Australia's well earned World Cup ticket - about time this generation of Aussie 'soccer' players got their chance on the biggest stage in my opinion and they'll be everyone's worst nightmare if fourth-seeded for the World Cup group draw next month.

So, next stop is the city of Manama in Bahrain where the locals were up against Trinidad and Tobago. The winners would get their first appearance at the World Cup finals and Bahrain came in with an away goals advantage after getting out of the Caribbean with a 1-1 draw. Coming in, it looked like T+T had blown their chance...only for defender Dennis Lawrence who plays for Wrexham of all clubs to hit a second half winner for 'Trini'. Class work by the Soca Warriors with Dwight Yorke reckoning that his side will mean business in Germany.

From there it's on to Istanbul, Turkey having flown home heavily damaged from Berne. Alexander Frei's early penalty for Switzerland then seemingly dooming them. However Tuncay Sanli put in a brace for Turkey to swing things round on the night before Necati Ates leveled the tie(though Turkey now had away goals to deal with). Anyone's game...then Swiss sub Marco Streller(plays for VfB Stuttgart) killed the Turks off. Sanli completed his hattrick to make sure his side went down in a blaze of glory...only for his teammates to start a punch up in the tunnel after the match. The Turks are now whining about Sepp Blatter's threats to boot them out of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers. Given the last decade + of Turkish fan violence with neither UEFA nor FIFA seemingly caring one bit...I'm putting it down to karma.

In Bratislava, Spain were pretty much in cruise mode against an already dead Slovakian side. Filip Holosko opened the scoring for the home side on the night only for Valencia striker David Villa to come on as a substitute and deny the East Europeans even that much pride.

A short hop into Prague and the Czech Republic simply needed to take care of business against Norway, no worries here, Tomas Rosicky hitting the winner on the night.

With World Cup business taken care of, what else was going on? Well Wales headed to Cyprus for a friendly that even John Toshack admitted was a complete disaster, Cypriot midfielder Chrysis Michel hitting the winner with a penalty, the Welsh may have had a load of injuries but that's one team that has to get it's act together.

Going down a few more levels, FA Cup 1st round replays were happening in England, including Oldham trashing Midland Alliance side Chasetown 4-0 thanks to an opener from Paul Warne, a double from Chris Porter with substitute Chris Hall finishing the opposition off, and so host Brentford in round 2 in what could be a tough tie for the Bees.

And I guess on that note it's back to club League football on the weekend.

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