Showing posts with label Guangzhou R&F. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guangzhou R&F. Show all posts

Friday, 9 February 2018

Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Pound of Flesh" is not a good movie - South Melbourne 3 Gunagzhou R&F 0

I was not there last night, had other things to do, and none of those people who did attend have put their hand up to do a guest match report. So what you're going to get instead is a patchwork quilt of stuff I've gleaned from he web about this game.

First, it's important to reiterate an important point: this was not Guangzhou Evergrande, the seven times consecutive winners of the Chinese Super League and two-time winners of the Asian Champions League, This was their smaller and significantly less successful city rival Guangzhou R&F. That doesn't mean they don't have resources at their disposal which would put them well outside our reach, but you know, the opponent is not as prestigious as some people may have inadvertently thought they may have been.

It also doesn't mean that this Guangzhou R&F don't have other things going for them.
This was also not the first time we've played Guangzhou R&F this pre-season; we played them last Saturday evening in a behind closed doors game, losing 4-1, with perhaps a mix of senior and youth players from our side, though I can't verify that.
Guangzhou R&F have also been busy playing some other teams; before our last Saturday game, they played Oakleigh two days prior, and two days before yesterday's game they'd played Melbourne Heart, and on Sunday they play Dandenong Thunder. As you can see, it's a crowded schedule, and the squads Guangzhou R&F are likely to be using for each friendly are going to have a high degree of variability.

Someone noted of yesterday's game that our guests used a reserve squad for the first half, and a fuller strength side for the second. The reserves therefore would be made up of Chinese players, whose quality I can't gauge from the comfort of my home office, but. Unlike the A-League teams, Chinese sides seems to adhere to the AFC's 3+1 foreigner rule, but they're still fully professional whereas we're a glorified pub team, a gastro-pub team if you like.

For ourselves, it was a pretty full-strength squad, probably close to what you'd see for round one against Bulleen.
Martin (no first name provided) is a defender, probably a visa slot candidate, unsigned as yet as far as I'm aware. Not much evidence of youth team players there, for those who are going to ride that hobby-horse for superior and/or ulterior motives.

We were 2-0 (Lujic, Konstantinidis) up at the break, and added a third (Brennan) in the second half. From what I can gather from the piecemeal information floating around, we looked good going forward, very exciting, and lousy going back the other way. Those hoping for clues in that description to something of how a Sasa Kolman team might play should perhaps temper their excitement just a bit; even under the late Chris Taylor era during this pre-season, the team looked OK going forward and less than adequate defensively. Nevertheless, one can't be disappointed with the performance, only cautious as to what actual worth can be extracted from it. Some people are born optimists, while others are hoping for some evidence that we are going to be shit-hot after the turmoil of the past couple of weeks.

Of course what's a pre-season friendly win of indiscernible worth without South fans, their current politically adjacent affiliates, and aspiring doyens of the local soccer press going off half-cocked just because they can?
Sometimes South fans are like a bloke who has caught a glimpse of side-boob, getting excited beyond all measure of reasonableness to the point where he's started planning the wedding. In our case, when we see something approximating hope, we rush out to vote for every online poll no matter how meaningless it is
and end up making ourselves feel like dirt when nothing comes of it. There was a solid contingent of Chinese supporters in attendance, many more than South fans. I don't know who they were, how they got there, and whether they'll be back. OK, I don't think they'll be back, but I suppose for those South fans who were there it was nice to see a decent crowd for whatever it was that was happening last night.

There was also this
which I assume lead to the halftime melee that some reported, which saw the ejection of Lujic and Epifano, as well two players from the opposition. Sounds like it was am eventful night all round.

And he's gone
Like Jason Hicks and Francesco Stella before him, off-season South Melbourne signing Sam Smith has moved on to another club without playing a single legitimate game for us and indeed, like the others mentioned before the season has even started. In Smith's case, he's ended up at Port Melbourne. After all our efforts to get Smith - one rumoured attempt before he re-signed at Gold Coast City, and then as Gold Coast City got into an administrative mess we lured him down to Victoria - it seems like an odd decision,

Truth be told, I never saw much in his pre-season form (when I was paying attention) to get excited about. Others were far more critical of his skill level. I'll say this: judging from his highlights package, he looks like a classic out-and-out striker, and during pre-season we seemed to be trying to play him a lot on the wing, hoping as we've done since he left us to find the next Jaime Reed. It didn't work out, Smith would've taken up a visa spot we're apparently keen on using on a defender, these things happen. If that's the worst thing that happens during this off-season, we're doing OK.

In a similar vein, forward Amir Osmancevic, who had been trialling with us (and who did look impressive at times), has ended up at Pascoe Vale. Likewise, Kaine Sheppard has ended up at Avondale, or so people say. Oh, and Iqi Jawadi's back.
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Sunday, 4 February 2018

This industry moves so fast

I can't figure out what, if anything, the Australia
 China Football Development Association does. 
Chinese visitors, with caveats
I noted in an earlier post that Chinese Super League club Guangzhou R&F were due to tour Victoria this February (ie, "now") as part of their preparations for their 2018 league campaign. Though there was no firm detail about who they would play while they were here, it looks like South Melbourne is one of the lucky ones. Of course, we'll probably decide to pretend that we're a special case, even though Guangzhou R&F played Oakleigh last Thursday (and against other clubs while they're here), and I think maybe even toured here once before (I just can't find the damn photo I took a few years ago of a jersey on the walls of Dandenong Thunder's social club of some random Chinese soccer jersey).

Some of the hoopla around our connection to this tour is a bit strange. OK, so the club's press release over-eggs the custard a bit, but that's par for the course when Bill Papastergiadis is being quoted. The press release says that Guangzhou R&F will train at Lakeside (makes sense I suppose), but it also includes references to a formal dinner, as well as to something called the "Australia China Football Development Association", which has an ABN dating back to October 2017 but not much else to go on for people relying upon lazy internet searches.

I'd heard from another South fan that the club had hosted some big Chinese soccer organisation dinner in the social club, but I don't recall our interlocutor saying much more than that, and I just assumed it was an independent body with no specific connection to South, just some group which wanted to hire our facility for the night. Which now that I think about it, is horribly naive of me. What's so special about our social club that an outside entity would want to use it instead of another venue?

Anyway, the only other evidence I can find for what the Australia China Football Development Association actually is appears to be photos from the dinner event held I'm guessing in July or August 2017 (the latter at least is when the photos were uploaded to the web).

Left to right: South Melbourne president Leo Athanasakis, unidentified Asian gentleman, unidentified Caucasian gentleman, Victorian Member of Parliament for Glen Waverley (Liberal) Michael Gidley. another unidentified Asian gentleman, and South Melbourne director Andrew Mesourouni, flanking the FFA Cup. Photo: borrowed from Gidley's social media.

As for what it is that the ACFDA do, and what we have do with what it does, I'm not sure. When Papastergiadis says the following:
Our partnership with the Chinese business and football community continues to strengthen and grow each year. Establishing the Australia China Football Development Association has played a large role in this. Our youth coaching staff have recently returned from delivering a coaching conference in Jinshan for seventy local coaches
are we meant to infer that South is directly involved in actually forming the ACFDA, and that we have some material interest in it? If so, should we maybe have been told about this at the AGM?

Contrary to Neos Kosmos' otherwise word-for-word rehash of South's press release, the game will not have "invitation-only access to the match for invited community members and South Melbourne FC members and season pass holders." Rather, the game will be open to the general public, with kickoff at 7:30PM, and free entry. And while nothing says you're ready for broad-based mainstream success like operating your soccer club along the lines of Cartmanland, it's too bad that I can't go anyway, what with already having an actual exclusive, invitation-only commitment on that night.

If someone wants to do a guest match report for this game, let me know.

Latest on the Taylor sacking
Interesting Neos Kosmos article on the sacking of Chris Taylor, including direct quotes from both Taylor and South president Leo Athanasakis. Taylor asserts that he's still waiting to find out what exactly contract breaches were which lead to his sacking. He also reiterates the shock of the sacking, as well as noting that so far as he was concerned, the performance benchmarks contained in his contract had been met.

Taylor also notes that it's "obviously going to become a legal case and it will get dealt with in the courts I’d say”. We'll see if it pans out that way. A mediated settlement is usually the aim here, both to keep costs down and to avoid a public spectacle, but that's just my uneducated two cents on the matter, keeping in mind that my legal expertise only runs to Year 12 legal studies (in 2001!) and since then only attending court cases involving South Melbourne Hellas and/or Football Federation Victoria.

If this matter did proceed to a court case, the confidentiality agreement that would likely form a part of any out of court settlement between Taylor and the club would not come into being; interested onlookers with way too much time on their hands (ie, me) could witness (under oath!) for themselves why the club did what it did. Short of any of the parties directly involved blurting it out before then, it's probably the only legitimate way a mug punter would know for sure what happened.

For his part, Athanasakis says that the decision to sack Taylor had unanimous support from the board, but in the article he provides no further specifics as to why Taylor was sacked. The fact that he claims it was a whole board decision and not a unilateral one means that there had to have been a board meeting where the matter was discussed, and therefore this was planned at least some time in advance of the Saturday morning slaying. The questions then are how long ago did the board come to the conclusion that Taylor must go, and what made them come to this conclusion? As one of South of the Border's former contributors used, these are the questions that keep you up at night.
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