sidelined

Offseasons are dull by definition, a tale of potentialities and prognostication, might-bes, not events.The A-League is no different so I’ll try and keep this short, with a report-card flavour.

Adelaide United

Appear to be on the path to renewal after the eruptions of V2. Older players have retired (Veart*) or been shown the door (The Wrong Alosi), have retained form players Costanzo, Burns and Djite and several good signings suggest a recharged squad ready to continue the good form of V1-V2.

Major coup: Legendary Socceroo striker Paul Agostino
Other good signings: pacy young striker Kristian Sarkies from MVFC, solid NZKFC (and briefly SFC) D-Mid Jonah Salley.
?? : Jose de Abreu Oliveira (“Cassio”) – Santa Cruz mystery Brazillian midfielder no. 34502
Could do with: better backline – Alagich and Valkinis are sub par, esp for V3.

Central Coast Mariners

Major story of CCM’s offseason has been a wave of ‘defections’ from Sydney (ok, it’s two people, but bear with me) starting with Skyblue’s stiker Sasho Petrovski and now founding boardmember Peter Turnbull. The former could bring the opportunistic goalfront élan that Mariners lacked in V1-V2 and the latter will bring truckloads of cash. With most of last season’s injury cases finally healed and Dean Heffernan back from his sojourn with FC.1 Nurnberg the Mariners are looking very dangerous indeed.

Major Coup: see above
Other good signings/returns: Mile Jedinak, Dean Heffernan
Could do with: not much more, I wouldn’t think.

Melbourne Victory

The big story for MVFC is the snatching of their midfield powerhouse Fred by the dastardly DC United**. Merrick will be hoping he has replaced like for like with Costa Rican youth star Carlos Hernandez. Otherwise things look pretty stable squad-wise; look out for rising young Socceroo Kaz Patafta, back on a one-year loan from Portugese giants Benfica. Despite VPL bans MVFC could repeat V2, and will undoubtedly push for Premiership.

Good signings: the aforementioned, fringe Socceroo defender Ljubo Milicevic from BSC Young Boys
??: is Hernandez the new Fred or the new Claudinho? Can ex-Chelsea left-mid Joe Keenan replace Alessandro on the left flank?
WTF moments: acrimonious flare-chucking craziness at match with South Melbourne FC – MVFC have been banned from any more trial matches with VPL teams as a consequence. See Guido for more. Bizarro-match with Chinese national squad at Tianjin, no TV coverage, no attendance and played in three thirty-minute intervals. WTF???

Newcastle United Jets

After lighting up mid-V2 after almost crashing in the earlier rounds Jets fans must be still wondering how they didn’t end up with anything to show for their superb form under van Egmond. They may have to start all over again as, like MVFC, the Jets have seen their biggest playmaker depart in the offseason, two of them in this case: Nick Carle heads off to GençlerbirliÄŸi S.K.*** in Turkey, while Colombian sensation Milton Rodriguez returns to his native land to further his coaching ambitions and stuff. In this case their replacements come in the form of young Argie duo Livio Prieto and striker Jorge Alberto ‘La Bala’ Drovandi† .

Bad Luck fellas: Carle, Rodriguez, and Kiwi striker Vaughn Coveney to Wullingten Finukz.
??: Prieto and Drovandi
WTF moment: signing CCM, SFC reject Noel Spencer.

Perth Glory

Whenever this Sydney FC fan gets furious at his management’s tightfistedness, incompetence and sloppy signings, a brief look over West puts my woes in perspective. Out of the outstanding, pioneering NSL clubs of the last decade, the model for much of the reforms of the 2004 domestic league reforms enters the third season of the new era a shadow of itself. Failure is an orphan but Glory has a phonebook of feckless foster parents deserving of Family Court investigation, as any fan will tell you. Homeless, under FFA administration with a less-than-inspiring squadlist, Glory’s offseason woes are perhaps encapsulated by their pursuit of onetime star Socceroo defender Hayden Foxe: beset by injuries after a less than stellar European career he may will return as an apt incarnation of Glory’s current state.

Good signings: former MK Dons midfielder Nick Rizzo should hopefully lend some spark to Glory’s forwards while Nikolai Topor-Stanley, SFC’s solid backliner is another ray of light for Glory fans.
WTF moment: see above

Queensland Roar

Roar have been pretty quiet the past few months. This is all to the good as Farina’s men appear to be coming in under the radar this season to rip it up with an eager squad of aggressive young local talent and foreign experience. Or a least that’s what they want us to think…

Good signing: Danny Tiatto – should kick arse on the left flank
??: Brazillian†† Marcinho: is he the canetoads answer to Fred? Kruse, Grossman, Nichols, Ham and the rest of the youngsters on Farina’s squad.

Sydney FC

A short offseason for Skyblue. After the ACL rollercoaster Branko Culina is currently looking at the shortest squad list in the league, a paltry 17/23, likely to be 16/23 if rumours of talisman Dave Carney’s immanent departure are true. Major gaps remain at left-back and a bona fide marquee forward is the order of the day.

Frustratingly for fans, while several tantalising names have been dangled in front of our eyes we seem to be no closer one week out from pre-season. Philip Cocu may appear as a guest player, and Robbie Fowler and Jay Jay Okocha have announced offers but this pales in comparison to the dickering and back-and-forthing over John Aloisi who appearsed to meet the Three Impossible Marquee Conditions (good, famous, under $1m) but has yet to be snatched up got greedy and wouldn’t come to terms despite talking about how eager he was to bring something back to Australian football. If our two major deficienies are fixed this side is techinically and tactically eenveensible. Otherwise doesn’t bear thinking about.

Good signings: Tony Popovic!
??: striker Brendon Santalab – could mesh well with Zdrillic Could be another Zdrillic
WTF: No marquee!

Wellington Pheonix

From this side of the Tasman the ‘Nix look like a Good Thing, having had an excellent startup motto: Do The Opposite Of Everything The NZ Knights Did. Picking a city with a vibrant football community, working with New Zealand Football, picking a local coach, not picking a squad of useless League One/Two plonkers, having more than four Kiwi players etc. Coach Ricki Herbert was able to quickly whip the NZ Knights into something approaching form in the dying weeks of V2‡ and with a fresh pick of quality local and A-League Kiwis and four mystery Brazillians he should go one better.

11/7/07 UPDATE: Glory sign Foxe. Prieto can’t make it for Jets over visa difficulties. Aloisi is off, but Sydney have signed former Socceroo defender Tony Popovic and are in talks with Robbie Fowler (aka ‘God’ to scousers). Poppa is great news for Sydney’s backline and Fowler would likely flood SFS with red jerseys, but this fan is still skeptical.

*perennial bugbear striker, Sydney fans won’t miss the ginger gadfly one bit.
** this is me trying to be neutral, I don’t think many SFC fans were at all upset to hear the news
*** Wiki says this translates to ‘Union of Juveniles’ in English. Phonetically it’s something like: “gench-ler-bur-li-yi”
† the first Argentinian to play in the A-League, AFAICT.
†† there are nine of them in the league to date, easily beating last years record
‡including killing CCM’s finals hopes and a hilarious 1-0 win over SFC.§
§actually it was pretty funny, but that’s a story for another time.