Non European Leagues

Asterix

Hi there - chuck your A League, MLS, J League, K League etc stuff in here.

I live and work close to the new Western Sydney Wanderers team in the A League in Australia. They were formed a few months before the competition started, and appointed Tony Popovic as manager. Tony is an ex Socceroo and was assistant at Crystal Palace at the time. The club consulted widely with the fan base and as a result has a traditional name (instead or Roar or Victory), a great strip (white shorts with red and black hoops on the jersey) and plays in a lovely 20,000 seat stadium with an immaculate pitch. The Red and Black Block - the RBB - make a helluva lot of noise and involve the whole ground in some chants. The two most recent home attendances were 14,500 and 16,500.

Originally the squad was made up of acquisitions from other A League clubs and a returning promising youngster - Aaron Mooy, a local 22 year old who was at Bolton's academy before moving to St Mirren.

Then, when Sydney FC signed Del Pierro, the A League helped the Wanderers sign Shinji Ono, a living legend in Japan and veteran of 2 World Cup campaigns. He has formed a great partnership with Mooy and with Youssef Hersi, a Dutchman with a slight frame but great feet.

The defence is well drilled as you'd expect with an international centre half as manager, and the team has started scoring goals after none in their first 3 games.

With the season into it's final third the club sits 3rd behind the Central Coast and Melbourne Victory, where Ange Postecoglou is working his managerial magic. He previously managed the Brisbane Roar to successive championships. They are now rubbish. Mostly the same players, but 2 different coaches this season and are flopping.

The A League goes on selling players in January to Europe. Tom Rogic and Marco Rojas were the two most exciting players. Rogic, from the amazing production line at the Central Coast, has joined Celtic and Rojas, a skinny young Kiwi, is being scouted by Liverpool and Juventus, but looks like staying in Melbourne for now. Aziz Behich from Melbourne Heart has joined Bursaspor in Turkey

The implementation of national youth skills programmes looks like paying off now, with more technical, skillful players coming through the ranks, rather than those relying on hoof and run. We still have a decade or so before we catch up with Japan and start producing players like Kagawa and Honda.

Oh, and Sydney FC have Del Piero and Emerton, but have not figured out how to make the most of the Italian, and are a bit rubbish.

Who do you sing for? We sing for Wanderers!

invisibleman18

Regular Wellington Phoenix match-goer here. Started going when I moved to Wellington in late 2009 as I was finally living in a city with live professional football. At first was going for the love of football as I find the concept of supporting someone other than Arsenal to be extremely strange. Have grown into a supporter over time although obviously not in the sense that a loss ruins my whole week like with Arsenal.

Good season last year and it looked really promising but it's all gone to shit this year. Will probably deservedly finish bottom. The owners who know nothing about football have started interfering with team training sessions and tactics and 1 of them (there's a group of 6) even came out in the media last week and called the fans "pathetic and unsophisticated" for complaining at how bad they have been this season. When you're only getting 6,000 to matches in a 35,000 capacity stadium that's a great way to keep you hardcore fans onside.

The coach really needs to go. Also teams are allowed a maximum of 5 import players (ie, players from outside of NZ and Australia) and 3 of the Phoenix's 5 are completely hopeless with 2 of them hardly ever in the team. Desperately need to make better use of these 5 spots.