Pritchard: A Shot At Redemption

Sydney FC manager Craig Pritchard sees this weekend's match against Atalanta at the Sydney Football Stadium as an opportunity for small revenge on Italian football after the Socceroos were knocked out of the 2006 World Cup in controversial fashion at the hands of the Azzurri.

With few seconds of stoppage time remaining in the second round clash, Italian Fabio Grosso went to ground in the box with what can be most kindly described as minimal contact, if any, from Socceroos skipper Lucas Neill. The resulting penalty was converted by Francesco Totti and broke the hearts of a nation, while the Italians continued on to win the World Cup.

The incident is not lost on the Australians, particularly Pritchard, who has the opportunity to defeat Atalanta this weekend and is encouraging the locals to greet the Italian club appropriately.

"Many of us are still hurt about what happened, there's no doubt about it." Pritchard told reporters. "There were a lot of angry and dismayed people in this country at the time, myself included. Australia competed with one of the best national teams in the world and our chance of qualifying was taken away from us. The images of heartbreak across Australia are the kind of images that will be in my players minds approaching tonight's match."

"This is an exciting occasion for us. Not only is it the opening of AFM but also it is a shot to give some sort of revenge over the Italians over what they've done to us. As soon as the fixtures were drawn the opening fixture for us has created a great sense of anticipation. We want to do the business in front of our own fans and the prospect of seeing the locals out in force will be a tremendous motivation for all the guys in the dressing room."

Well I did make my feelings known on another thread as to why I think the goalscoring is low so I'll leave it there and make other comments on the season so far.

League 1 ... still anyone's for the taking. Tremendously close, five points cover all eight teams and that includes Leicester having a two-point gap over second-placed Sao Paulo! So while not many goals are scored, the competition is still very close and everyone still has a chance although the next two to three rounds could spread the field a little.

League 2 ... will be interesting to see how Simon fares with table-topping AZ Alkmaar. I'd tip them to take one of the promotion places. I think Bristol Rovers are front-runners for the other promotion place thanks to their goalscoring record. Dortmund may not be far behind either but CSKA Sofia probably won't get promoted as they are getting far too many draws and really aren't scoring much. I'd like to think I'm in the running if I can get some more wins on the board but I think I'm too far behind at this stage and the teams at the pointy end are playing quite well now.

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