Today In Sport

The Toronto Maple Leaf’s captain, Dion Phaneuf got his biggest hit of the night on his team-mate, Mike Komisarek during the warm-ups before the game.  The Laughs are certainly full of surprises this season, not always good ones though.  But this is great.

After scoring a brilliant goal a couple of weeks ago against the North Queensland Fury, Adelaide United’s new Argentinian superstar midfielder Marcos Flores proved once again why he will be the most dangerous player in the A-League this season with a piece of individual brilliance against the Newcastle Jets.

Battling against two players and then rounding three more, he scored what will be hard to beat for goal of the year.

This past week the Football Federation of Australia announced the successor to Pim Verbeek for the head coach position with the Socceroos, Holger Osieck.  Who?  No, seriously.  Who the hell is that? 

Well apparently after a mediocre playing career, he worked his way up to being Franz Beckenbauer’s assistant/clipboard monkey at Italia 90.  Oh by the way, he is German, not Dutch so that is a step in the right direction.  After winning a World Cup with Germany he then descended into lower league club football before landing the top job with Canada.

Osieck managed to win a CONCACAF Gold Cup in his time there but was unable to take Canada to the World Cup.  He then joined FIFA in 2004 as the chief of their Technical Department.  Hopefully he still has some contacts there that might help us win the hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup.

He rejoined the coaching ranks in 2007, taking over J-League side Urawa Red Diamonds.  He took them to the 2007 Asian Champions League title.  But does that make him a good coach when he was dumped early in the 2008 season for a poor start?  I am not convinced by his credentials yet.

However, he is now our manager and he promises us that he will usher in a new generation of Socceroos.  At least we newspapers around Australia will be able to have such witty headlines as “Ossie leads us into the World Cup.”  Assuming we make it.

Shaquille O’neal was this week announced as the newest addition to the Boston Celtic’s All-Star Cavalcade Of Future Hall Of Famers Retirement Tour.  That’s not to say that this team won’t be competitive, far from it.  They have over 50 combined All-Star appearances on their roster and they can all still play.

But they are not getting any younger and other teams are getting better, most notably Miami.  Shaq is becoming a bit of a journeyman in his latter years, this being his fourth different team in four years.  He has been signed by teams like Phoenix and Cleveland who believed his experience could help them get to the championship.

However Shaq is now more likely to get the final piece of pizza rather than be the final piece in the championship puzzle.  Boston had their final shot at a title with this team last season and came up a few games short against the Lakers.  This should be the last year for this group as it stands now.

And Shaq, stop hurting your legacy and just retire at the end of this season.  You do not want to be Michael Jordan finishing up your days as an ageing superstar trying to get a rubbish team to be less rubbish and failing.

For those who came in late, Ilya Kovalchuk was traded during the middle of last season from Atlanta to the New Jersey Devils.  He became a much sought after commodity during the off-season and was actively pursued by many a NHL club, most notably Los Angeles.

But the New Jersey management came up with a brilliant plan.  Offer Ilya the most overblown and convuluted deal in history, $102 million over 17 years.  Now, at 27 years old this would mean his contract would end when he is 44.  Sure there have been the odd player that has been able to go into their 40’s but it is a little ridiculous.

That is until you read the part where his wage is scaled from almost $10million a year down to the base rate in his final 5 years.  This gave the overall contract a lower average yearly salary to help fit into the NHL salary cap.  This is where the NHL stepped in and said we don’t like these shennanigans.

But the NHL Players Association countered with “But why?” and now we are headed to arbitration.  This is usually a quick process but for some reason there was no arbitrator in place at the time (why would there be, it’s only mad trading month).  So, finally tomorrow the decision will be at least discussed.

There are teams hanging on the verdict, again most notably The Kings who are ready to pounce on Ilya should his contract be vetoed and torn up.  It’s not like this is the first lengthy contract though.  I think what the NHL are concerned about is the fact that while The Devils are paying Ilya huge money, they still comfortably fit under the cap.

Then when the final 5 years comes around and he is 39, New Jersey then can cut him and pay out the relatively paltry sum of $2.5m of the rest of his contract and also recover about $7m in their cap space.  You can see both sides.  The club wants to work their contracts as they see fit to help their club and the NHL wants to stop rorting of the system.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out.