U20 World Cup - Why aren't YOU going

Acc. to them we're going up!

Population size obviously isn't everything, or else China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh etc would be powerhouses of football. What I think is a key point is to have a solid professional pathway for young players to develop through. The smaller your population, the harder that is to maintain. Having another sport dominate the local market also doesn't help. So I guess what I'm saying is that population is a factor but is more important in relation to how it affects the development of your players rather than as a stand alone factor. 

I got the impression he was talking about the games that had been played in Wellington. Said the only decent game was the Argentina v Ghana game. Starts off by saying of the 11 teams we got to see in Wellington, Uzbekistan were by far the worse......um, what about Myanmar? I was actually surprised by Uzbekistan and thought they played a lot better than what NZ did here despite that 5-1 win. Not sure what the point of the article was. Does Hamish Bidwell know anything about football?

The DomPost ignored the tournament and, as 

Gooner 4 Life, noted, this....

what a prick. 

what a prick. 

Hamish Bidwell is a complete toser.   Feel like writing to the editor.  

I didn't think stuff ignored the tournament though - online they had a special page set up and most days there were match reports.  I even found this when clicking on the FIFA U-20 banner http://www.interactives.co.nz/FIFAtest/index.html

The could have done more feel good articles though.

It reads like the kind of myopic view that a rugby person would have

Or a dying newspaper desperately trying to stir things up.

Okay, let me try to defend this piece (a little). It's clearly an Opinion piece rather than a fact driven journalism article. He's entitled to his opinion.

I agree with critics here that the position he takes is disappointing but it's clear Bidwell wasn't enamoured with the football teams or the hype.  

On the crouds aspect, perhaps he could have undertaken some journalistic endeavour and found out from organisers how croud numbers were determined and point to weaknesses in this.

Personally, I couldn't disagree with the last paragraph more. I thought the games were tremendous value for money.

I thought sub-editors set titles more often than not (although sub-editors are dying out in the latest restructuring changes). 

he's entitled to his opinion, sure. And I'm entitled to my opinion that he's a prick. 

It's not an opinion piece as there isn't a photo of him at the top.

That's your opinion

No.  This is my opinion:

I think the paleo diet is bollocks.

Yep I can see the photo, so I guess that proves you are right.