Pim Verbeek finally shows he has balls by criticising mess he left

Former Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek has
been quoted in Qatari media as saying Australian
football faces a bleak period as the brightest stars in
Australian football history are slowly extinguished.



Well, you'd know, Pim.



His Aussie tenure was marked
by Viking-style honesty. Did you ever meet someone so honest
that every conversation you had with them ended up revolving around
your faults?

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Shelvey, Suso and Sterling: Liverpool's future

Liverpool's three years of struggle has
been not only documented but celebrated. In fact, their primacy over
much of English football's history means that the rebuilding efforts
of 2012-13 are providing not only column inches, but also the
can't-look-away-car-wreck Hard
Knocks clone, Being: Liverpool.



The stilted attempt at a fly's-view
series has attempted several times to conjur interest

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Time for UEFA to act strongly on Serbia

After a hard-fought win against Collingwood in 1993, Australian footballer Nicky Winmar turned to the crowd at Victoria park, raised
his jersey and pointed at his chest.




Winmar is an indigenous Australian. He
had spent the entire 120 minutes of the match being racially abused
by the pro-Collingwood crowd. The moment was captured on film by a
photographer from the Age newspaper and went

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Minnows deserve their puncher's chance

Proboxing-fans.com's lexicon
of pugilistic nomenclature defines a “Puncher's Chance” as
“[a fighter] who doesn't have a very good chance of beating the
other fighter, who is probably more skilled, but could still pull off
the win by landing a great punch and knocking his man out”.




Basically, a puncher's chance is what
it says on the tin. It was the concept that defined all six Rocky
movies

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New code of conduct has to help, right?

Last week the English FA handed down
the report of its investigation
into the racial abuse case levelled at former national team
captain John Terry. The 53-page report loosely implies – but stops
far short of accusing – Terry, teammate Ashley Cole and Chelsea FC
executive David Barnard of contriving evidence to benefit the
player's defence.




Cole responded as any normal person
would: with
a

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Three things: Rooney reinvented

Maybe Sir Alex has found his
central midfielder



Experts suggested Sir Alex Ferguson
fling his summer spending money at a central midfielder with tenacity
and passing range. Instead, he thrust an enormous great wodge of
cash at former rival Arsene Wenger and made
away with Robin van Persie.



This left the centre of Old Trafford
manned by the solid but ultimately-misunderstood Michael

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Michael Ballack retires

Earlier this week, former Germany captain Michael
Ballack retired from all professional football. The most stylish
and (sometimes brutally) effective German player of his generation
leaves the game permanently at age 36.



Ballack had both the fortune and misfortune of being born five years too
late. To look at it another way, he was born five years too early.
He could have been a precocious

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Three things: Where have all the good teams gone?

Are there any great teams in this
league?




Table-toppers
Chelsea, while capable of sparkling, appear to lack real depth in
their midfield. Nonetheless, they remain the team to beat.
Manchester City have flattered to deceive so far this season;
cross-town nemeses United have struggled mightly, losing at home to
Tottenham Hotspur for the first time in Tom Cleverley's lifetime.
Arsenal,

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