Football Matters with Cyclops

Local

The Burdekin Panthers Presentation Night will be held this Saturday 12 October at Populin’s Hall. Tickets are now available and can be bought online or from the Mad House at Night Soccer.

The next Big Thing locally is the Escriva Cup. This is due to be played on Friday evening, 1 November. The Escriva Cup is a fundraiser held by The SLoBs (Soccer Legends of the Burdekin) to help out ex-players with health problems. Last year fourteen Men’s teams and two Ladies teams took part. Hopefully, we will have more teams involved this year.

Night Soccer

Delta Cleaners Night Soccer’s Week 5 produced just 64 goals from the twenty two games. Top scorers for the Men were Mottin Earthmoving with six goals and BA with five. In the Women’s competition UDS Ladies and Lets Get Messi both scored five goals. Individual top scorers were Jay Leckenby and Sian Reardon with three goals each. Teams are reminded that their Nomination Fees are now due!

Juniors

The Junior season has finished but the Junior social soccer season started on Tuesday.
The Under 7s kick off at 4.00 pm followed by the Under 8-9s, Under 10-12s and Under 13-16s.

National and International

The Socceroos have two very important matches coming up. They play China, this Thursday in the Asian World Cup Qualifying Group C, in Adelaide and are then away to Japan, next Tuesday. China is bottom of the six team group and the match is a ‘must win’ for new coach Tony Popovic. In Japan a draw would be a good result. China has lost both of its games and Japan has won both, scoring twelve goals in the process.

The Matildas have two friendly matches in October. The first is away to Switzerland on 25 October and they are then booked for a friendly against Germany on Monday 28th October in Duisburg. Their next games are not until late November - December when they play Brazil, home and away.

Only two weeks now before the A League kicks off its 2024-25 season. The first round will be played over the weekend of 18 - 20 October. The A League Women will kick off on 1st November.

In the EPL, with all three top teams winning, Liverpool stays in first place, one point ahead of Manchester City and Arsenal. Chelsea and Aston Villa who drew, are a further three points away and Brighton who beat Ange’s Spurs move into sixth place. At the foot of the table all four bottom teams lost and Wolves and Southampton still have one point after seven games.

In Germany’s Bundesliga, Bayern could only draw again and is now level on points with Leipzig. Eintracht is a point away in third place with Freiburg fourth and Leverkusen has dropped to fifth spot. Holding up the league, Kiel and Bochum have both yet to win a game although Kiel did manage a draw this week.

In Italy’s Serie A, four of the top five teams won, and after seven rounds Napoli leads Inter by two points with Juventus who could only draw and is a further point behind together with Lazio and Udinese. At the bottom of the table, three of the last four teams lost with Monza grabbing a point. Venezia is last with four points from seven games.

In Spain, only two of the leading seven teams won. Barcelona and Real Madrid both won and Barca still tops La Liga three points clear of Real with Atletico and Villareal four points adrift. At the bottom of the league Las Palmas is still yet to win a game and has three points from nine matches

And in France, with PSG only managing a draw, Monaco now leads the table two points clear of PSG. Marseille stays in third place level on points with Reims. At the foot of the table, Angers managed a draw but is still the only team without a win, and that’s after seven games.

This weekend is another “International Weekend”. England is at home to Greece, France away to Israel, Italy at home to Belgium and Spain at home to Denmark.

The Quote of the Week is from England Star Striker Gary Lineker “In my day, I wasn't the best footballer, but I was the best goalscorer for two or three years”.

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