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Round ball code talk

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Saturday I went and watched Ange and the Boss Puskas in Australia doco which I wrote about in post #3,798 about 10 days ago.

It was a great doco, funny, entertaining, enlightening, a reminder of how ignorant Aussie sports media was to his greatness and sad at the end when they showed his funeral with his coffin draped with the Hungarian flag being pulled by horses in main square in Budapest, with 200,000 people following it to the service, and a 36 gun salute by Hungarian soldiers.

As one Hungarian says in the doco, Hungary is only famous around the world for 2 things, goulash and Puskas.

He was a simple, humble, generous, was funny and loved the relaxed life style of Australia. And an unbelievable talented player especially that left boot.

He is of that generation who had to lived thru a depression, then a war, then the rebuild, and finally crushed by the cold war soviet union invasion of his homeland and became stateless for a few years and FIFA didn't let him play for anyone for a couple of years, and learnt to appreciate the simple, but important things in life.

His players loved him, loved his simple approach to the game, his desire to play attacking football and score lots of goals and his philosophy of - boys there are only 3 things you need to know about football, you win, you lose or you maketh the draw.

Ex Socceroo Paul Trimboli is the star of the doco for me, but all of the old South Melbourne players are great and tell some great stories about The Boss. Trimboli said in one part of the doco they lost a game 0-1 which they should have won. He said Puskas told them that Hungary was 2-0 in the 1954 World Cup and they lost by a goal, 2-3. He was telling the players get on with it, don't stay depressed, life goes on and don't lose the next game.

I came out of the doco on a high. Then an hour later I was in a pub watching Port capitulate against Collingwood. But thinking about the doco tonight, I have a smile on my face recalling some of the funny stories told during it.

If you love world football, or appreciate different sports, I highly recommend the doco.
 

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RussellEbertHandball said:
Saturday I went and watched Ange and the Boss Puskas in Australia doco which I wrote about in post #3,798 about 10 days ago.

It was a great doco, funny, entertaining, enlightening, a reminder of how ignorant Aussie sports media was to his greatness and sad at the end when they showed his funeral with his coffin draped with the Hungarian flag being pulled by horses in main square in Budapest, with 200,000 people following it to the service, and a 36 gun salute by Hungarian soldiers.

As one Hungarian says in the doco, Hungary is only famous around the world for 2 things, goulash and Puskas.

He was a simple, humble, generous, was funny and loved the relaxed life style of Australia. And an unbelievable talented player especially that left boot.

He is of that generation who had to lived thru a depression, then a war, then the rebuild, and finally crushed by the cold war soviet union invasion of his homeland and became stateless for a few years and FIFA didn't let him play for anyone for a couple of years, and learnt to appreciate the simple, but important things in life.

His players loved him, loved his simple approach to the game, his desire to play attacking football and score lots of goals and his philosophy of - boys there are only 3 things you need to know about football, you win, you lose or you maketh the draw.

Ex Socceroo Paul Trimboli is the star of the doco for me, but all of the old South Melbourne players are great and tell some great stories about The Boss. Trimboli said in one part of the doco they lost a game 0-1 which they should have won. He said Puskas told them that Hungary was 2-0 in the 1954 World Cup and they lost by a goal, 2-3. He was telling the players get on with it, don't stay depressed, life goes on and don't lose the next game.

I came out of the doco on a high. Then an hour later I was in a pub watching Port capitulate against Collingwood. But thinking about the doco tonight, I have a smile on my face recalling some of the funny stories told during it.

If you love world football, or appreciate different sports, I highly recommend the doco.
Click to expand...

I have just watched the goals and the shootouts of the 1991 GF.

The PKs were amazing:

SM: OXXXO.O.O.O (5)
MC: OOXXX.O.O.X (4)

Croatia had the winning shot TWICE and missed both.

 
GremioPower said:
I have just watched the goals and the shootouts of the 1991 GF.

The PKs were amazing:

SM: OXXXO.O.O.O (5)
MC: OOXXX.O.O.X (4)

Croatia had the winning shot TWICE and missed both.

Click to expand...

That GF and the shoot out is the real climax of the doco. One of the players says something like - Puskas got divine intervention for them not just to win the shoot out, but to draw the game after Croatia dominated it all game. And they all talk about how nervous they were and Puskas was just sitting on the bench chewing gum.
 
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Oz beating China last night in WC qualifiers means Oz has to win 1 of the last 2 games in early June to automatically qualify from Group C for 2026 WC.

Play Japan in Oz on 5th, Japan has already qualified so might not be so driven to win and then on 10th play the Saudis away.

Saudis play Bahrain first. Oz win game against Japan, the Saudis wont make up a 9 goal difference if they beat us and both teams finish on 16 pts.


PosTeamPldWDLGFGAGDPts
1
40px-Flag_of_Japan.svg.png
Japan (Q).......		8620242+2220
2
23px-Flag_of_Australia_%28converted%29.svg.png
Australia (X)		8341136+713
3
40px-Flag_of_Saudi_Arabia.svg.png
Saudi Arabia		824246−210
4
23px-Flag_of_Indonesia.svg.png
Indonesia....		8233814−69
5
40px-Flag_of_Bahrain.svg.png
Bahrain (Z)..		8134513−86
6
23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png
China (Z)......		8206619−136
 
The teams that have qualified to date, listed by region:

AFC(2)
CONCACAF(3)
CONMEBOL(1)
OFC(1)

We left OFC because it was always hard to try and qualify via an intercontinental play off when it was 24 or 32 teams and usually played a South American team. Asia whilst tougher, was a lot better competition over the 2.5 years trying to qualify.

Now with 48 teams NZ is going to go to every WC, baring some sort of disaster..

NZ beat New Caledonia 3-0 to take the spot for OFC and New Caledonia goes into the 6 team Inter Continental playoffs to qualify 2 teams. 5 of the 6 continents are represented, Europe isn't and CONCACAF get 2 teams go to the play offs.

In addition to the above 7 teams going to 2026 WC, 44 teams have been officially been knocked out and 158 are still alive to qualify.
 

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dirty2 said:
Oceania and Asia might as well just join up and become 1 big region until Oceania catches up and they split again.
Click to expand...
The issue is travel for the small Pacific Island nations.

Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tahiti etc don't really have the monies to be flying to the middle east, the Stans etc for games. So if they were part of Asia they would probably have their own division.
 
When 48 teams is barely enough. Maybe the Heard and McDonald Islands will be a chance to qualify...

www.espn.com.au

UEFA boss: 64-team men's World Cup 'a bad idea'

A push to expand the men's 2030 World Cup to 64 teams is "a bad idea," UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said on Thursday.
www.espn.com.au www.espn.com.au
 

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Been looking at new international soccer stadiums lately. Too many to post all of them here, but I want to concentrate on 2 of them.

Real Madrid's Bernabeu €1.76 billion renovation, that still isn't fully completed, but they have been playing there since December 2023 with about 90% of the new capacity of 85,000 and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium which opened 5 years ago as they both have retractable pitches. The Berbabeu is supposed to be completed in the Euro summer.

Firstly the engineering is bloody unbelievable and secondly comparing it to Docklands and why the grass grows well in those 2 stadiums and not at Docklands.

Those 2 stadiums have their pitches designed by the same company, Sener Group in Spain and the trays are about 2 feet deep ie 600mm of grass, dirt and sand and they put in heating elements at the bottom of the trays. I can't find an exact depth of the trays but at Tottenham the NFL field sits 1.6m below the natural grass surface.

At Docklands there is 200mm of grass, dirt and sand, on a cold concrete slab, no heating elements, nowhere for roots to grow thru holes in the concrete and a car park under it, which keeps the concrete slab cold.

The drop in cricket pitches are 200mm deep trays but they sit on concrete rails not full concrete slabs, so they get some heat under the trays, but they also get a lot of natural sunlight because those grounds they dont have grandstand roofs that come all the way to the fence line and cause shadows on most of the oval, and the pitches usually only cover about a 25m x 25m area, compared to approx 170m x 140m fence to fence of turf all on a concrete slab at Docklands.

The Bernabeu retractable pitch breaks up into 6 trays of 105m x 11.6m and is parked underground and stacked on 6 levels covering 30m in a hole called a Hypogea/Hypogeum system. There was the only way to store the pitch. Each tray weighs about 1,500 tonnes, depending on how much water is embedded in the tray for 9,000 tonnes overall weight.

Tottenham's stadium the retractable pitch breaks into 3 pieces each tray is approx 3000 tonnes each and the pitch is the standard FIFA recommend 105m x 68m so roughly 3 trays of 105m x 23m. It sits under the southern stand and car park

This B1M you tube channel video, that specialises in construction projects, explains the pitch design, but also why they had to use a Hypogea/Hypogeum (underground chamber) system as there isn't room around the stadium like in Tottenham. It takes 6 hours to remove and store the 6 trays.






This official Real Madrid video for 1 year ago shows the pitch retracting but not voiceover, just music.




This official Real Madrid video of 1 year ago - with an in-depth look at how the Santiago Bernabéu stadium works as it shows you how the pitch is preserved inside the hypogeum. They speak with key figures involved in the day-to-day stadium operations to see exactly what is done to the pitch between matches.

Its in Spanish but if you hit the CC box at bottom of video just right of centre, you get English subtitles.




This video from 4 years ago has Top Gear Richard Hammond, showing the pitch moving and talks to key operational staff about 12 months after the first game was played at the new stadium. It takes 25 minutes to move and store the 3 trays. The new stadium cost £1 billion and holds 62,000.


 
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RussellEbertHandball said:
Been looking at new international soccer stadiums lately. Too many to post all of them here, but I want to concentrate on 2 of them.

Real Madrid's Bernabeu €1.76 billion renovation, that still isn't fully completed
Click to expand...

Real Madrid and Barcelona are committing a crime against both football and aesthetics with their last renovations.
 

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