Fozza's Two Cents

I was watching the evening news on SBS last night, the channel that's showing the world cup. They also show the Champion's League and have highlights of the regular seasons from around the world in 'The World Game' so have a couple of lads who are 'the faces' of Aussie football.

Their Gary Lineker (ex-pro turned anchorman) is Craig Foster (who had a brief spell at Palace in the late nineties). Like the mahogany jug-eared crisp seller he's even got the silver fox hairdo going on, though I've no idea if he likes to cheat on his wife (allegedly). Anyway, watching the news and when it's time for the sport they go to "Foz" in South Africa who reads the world cup news from behind a desk, giving out the results of the most recent games, injury updates, and the reactions to Australia's defeat etc

And then he goes totally mental. Goes right off the reservation. He flows straight from reporting the football news into a massive rant about Pim Verbeek and how he should be sacked straight away after Australia's disgraceful performance and choice of tactics against the Germans. Starts ranting on about how if Verbeek wants to keep his job for the next match he should be made to justify his decisions to a panel made up of former Socceroo captains!

Absolute quality. Can you imagine Lineker losing it live on the BBC and demanding that if Capello wants to remain in charge for the Algeria game he must justify picking Rob Green and Heskey to a panel made up of Tony Adams, Emlyn Hughes and David Beckham?! He was dropping in the odd we-hate-foreigners comment as well, like: "it's not his team, it's Australia's team, it's our team, he's not Australian". Brilliant.

He reckons himself as a big authority on the game and has come out with some right whoppers in the past, he also hates Verbeek, despite banging on about the Dutch style of play for donks before they got him in (he's had big rows with Craig Johnston in the past as his theory is that Australia aren't good enough for total football and should play route one).

It cut back to the two main news bods in the Sydney studio and they were sitting there like stunned mullets, spluttering out "Well, err... fighting talk from Foz there, we'll see you again tomorrow night, have a good evening..."

He later did the same thing on a highlights panel show, which has been reported here. Dunno if you'll be able to watch it outside of Australia but the clip is here. (It was much more Kent Brockman,and much better, on the news though).