where the hell is........

Blitzkrieger

From soccernet.com

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- NEWS

Monday, March 26, 2001
Eire check out Andorra allegations
By Bill Pierce

The Republic of Ireland have passed on to FIFA an anonymous tip that up to six members of the Andorra squad they are due to face in a World Cup qualifier on Wednesday night are ineligible.
The allegation is that midfielder Marc Bernaus has already played for Spain at competitive junior level while five other unnamed players do not have Andorran passports.

Bernard O'Byrne, chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, said: 'This information has been sent to us anonymously by fax to Dublin and my initial suspicion is that it is a complete red herring.

'I would be absolutely amazed if it were true.

'But we feel we are obliged to pass it on to the FIFA commissioner and let him deal with it before the game because we certainly do not want to become embroiled in anything afterwards.

'It is a very awkward situation for us.'

Checks have revealed that a Marc Bernaus did play for Spain against Ireland in 1997 in the World Under-20 Championships in Malaysia. 'It does seem very strange,' O'Byrne added.

'Why is somebody targetting us with this allegation now when some of these players have already played in earlier qualifiers for Andorra, including the game against Holland on Saturday night.'

The FAI have also been told by the mystery source that another Andorra midfielder, Justo Ruiz, only has a Spanish passport and has played for that country.

If Andorra, which has only been an independent sovereign state since 1993, have been employing `ringers' in their national side it has yet to do them much good.

They lost all 10 games in trying to qualify for the finals of Euro 2000 and in the current World Cup campaign have been beaten in all six games so far.

The latest was a 5-0 drubbing by Holland at the weekend, staged in Barcelona because the tiny country do not have a stadium large enough to host such games.

In fact, Andorra, situated in the central-eastern Pyrenees between Spain and France, have only ever won one game a friendly against Belarus a year ago.
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...Oh! So thats where it is!

Frankly it's a joke that countries like
this are allowed in the World Cup, when they have absolutly no chance of winning it (probably true of us too ) and don't even have a ****ing stadium to host a match in.

There should be some sort of critera to be allowed to take part, be it poulation, world ranking or national staium capacity.

It can't be enjoyable to lose every game. All they do is risk injuries to give every team 6 points.

Paladin

So where do you make the cut off point?

Personally i dont see why you are upset. So its an ez 6 points? Its fun to watch all the goals go in Altho this might be jinxing us...

Blitzkrieger

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Blitzkrieger:

All they do is risk injuries to give every team 6 points.
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*cough* ahem

Blitzkrieger

Lets have a generous cut-off point. If you lose by more than 15 goals in a qualifying match you're not eligible for the world cup


From soccernet.com :

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2"> Aloisi scores six as Australia set world record
Soccernet.com


COFFS HARBOUR, Australia, April 9 (Reuters) - Australia scored the most comprehensive victory in the history of soccer internationals on Monday when they beat Tonga 22-0 in Oceania's first round of qualifying for the 2002 World Cup finals.


The scoreboard shows the pain for the Tongans
(DarrenEngland/Allsport)
Striker John Aloisi of English premier league club Coventry City scored a double hat-trick while Kevin Muscat, who plays for English first division Wolverhampton Wanderers, found the net five times in a sparkling debut as Australia's captain.

A spokesman for FIFA, world soccer's ruling body, said the previous record victory in an international was China's 20-0 defeat of Bhutan in an Asian Cup qualifier in 2000.

The previous record for a World Cup qualifier was held by Iran who beat Guam 19-0 in Asia's first round of World Cup qualifying in Tehran last October.

The FIFA spokesman said there were "rumours" that Libya had beaten Oman 21-0 in an international in 1966 but this was unconfirmed.

Scott Chipperfield, who hit the first goal of the game in the third minute, struck again in the 83rd to make the score 20-0, setting a record for World Cup qualifiers against the 185th-ranked soccer nation in the world.

Australia, who are ranked 75th by FIFA and have not reached the World Cup finals since 1974, scored again in the 87th and one minute into injury time to win 22-0 after leading 10-0 at halftime.

The 21st goal was scored by substitute Con Boutsianis, who was fined last week and placed on a two-year good behaviour bond after admitting his role in a 1998 armed robbery.

Most of Australia's leading players including Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka of Leeds United and Australian captain Paul Okon, who is with Middlesborough, were unavailable for the group one qualifiers.

The winners of Oceania zone group one, which also includes Samoa, Fiji and American Samoa, will meet the winners of group two in a two-legged playoff in June.

The winners of that match will face a further playoff in November against the fifth-placed team in the South American qualifying group for a place in next year's finals in Japan and South Korea.

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Blitzkrieger

Austrailia also beat American Samoa 31-0. 31-0! That's a ****ing joke! A goal every 3 minutes. How the hell could you take a team like that seriously.

The winner are ranked 74th in the world and stand almost no chance of qualifying. This was a team without Viduka, Kewell, Bosnich, etc., made up partly of second and third division players. I think one of the hat-trick scorers can't even make the reserver team at his 2nd division club.

An under-strength 3rd string team hammer them, and they bother to take part? Why did they even come out for the second half? What a waste of air-fuel.