Chung Mong-Joon, the former FIFA Vice-President, today tweeted that his close friend and AFC President Mohamed Bin-Hammam is to challenge Sepp Blatter for the Presidency of FIFA in June. “It seems he will challenge the FIFA presidential election in June," wrote the Korean who was unseated by a Blatter loyalist Prince Ali Bin Hussein of Jordan at the AFC Congress in Doha in January. Bin-Hammam recently said Blatter, in charge since 1998, had spent too long at FIFA - 35 years in total, and pinned the global complaints about the organisation onto the President's back: "Everybody is going to accuse us today as corrupted people, " he said, "because maybe people see Mr Blatter has stayed a long time in FIFA." Blatter's to-ing and fro-ing over the date of the 2022 World Cup , toying with the possibility of other Gulf nations co-hosting and his vocal backing of India and Australia for future tournaments have been judged to be political moves designed to split the Asian vote. Bin Hammam set himself on collision course with Blatter since the President backed Bahrain's Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa in his ultimately failed attempt at unseating him at the AFC Congress in 2009. The Qatari has until the 1st of April to formally announce his bid, but recent statements from both he and Blatter appear to confirm the inevitable. (c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile Tags World Cup Pens World Cup Posters Euro 2012 football

Far from the tinderbox of the Gaza strip there’s a pocket of South America where you can see the Palestine flag flying high and football fans decked out in keffiyeh headdresses. These fans are the loyal followers of Club Deportivo Palestino, a team that narrowly missed out on Chile’s Primera División last season. They lost to Colo Colo in the championship play-off decider and were denied the third league title of their history. Chile has the largest population of displaced Palestinians outside the Middle East region and in 1920 a group of them decided to start a football team in Santiago. While in its infancy Palestino competed in the colonial championships of Osorno. These days home games are played at Cisterna Municipality Stadium and a capacity crowd produces a 12,000 strong sea of red, green and black. When a national league was established by the Federación de Fútbol de Chile in 1952 Palestino joined the second division and won an instant promotion to the top-flight. Three years later they won the national championship under the guidance of former Argentine captain Guillermo Coll. Their only other title came in 1978 with a league and cup double, this time with legendary Chilean captain Elías Figueroa at the helm. Another familiar face to have passed through the ranks at Palestino is former Chilean international midfield Clarence Acuña who had a spell at Newcastle United as well as appearing at 1998 World Cup for Chile. Despite Palestine remaining unrecognised as a country by everybody from the United Nations to Myspace, FIFA has allowed a Palestinian national team compete in World Cup qualifiers for the last 10 years. Faced with the problems of assembling a team able to compete within World Cup qualifiers the then Palestine national coach Nicola Shahwan hatched a scheme to tap into Chilean talent with Palestine heritage. Players from Club Deportivo Palestino and others started to make themselves available for the Palestine national team. Players such as Roberto Kettlun, Pablo Abdulla and Roberto Bishara were able to take advantage of FIFA’s grandparents rule and became eligible to play for Palestine. These player’s grandparents were not refugees from the 1948 war with Israel but instead Palestine Christians who were forced out by the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s. The naturalisation of footballers to another country is not a new phenomenon, Alfredo Di Stefano switched his allegiances across the Atlantic many moons ago. Presently, Uruguayan born striker Sebastian Sona’s goals are helping Qatar towards a place at South Africa 2010. Palestine’s Chilean contingent do however have a genuine historical connection with the area and their link courses through their veins. Nicola Shahwan and the Palestine FA were finally in a position to field these Chilean-born players in the national team in time for the 2003 Pan Arab Cup in Kuwait. The West Asian-South American axis of the side managed draws with Jordan, hosts Kuwait and Sudan. Defeat and elimination came after a 3-1 reverse against a strong Moroccan side. Despite the exit Palestine won plaudits for combining flair and a physical approach which is now the blueprint for the country’s style of play. Pablo Abdulla’s blond frizzy hair-do, reminiscent of Carlos Valderrama in his pomp, may have looked slightly out of place in Kuwait but the South American posse’s commitment to cause was there for all to see. Nicola Shahwan had pulled off a masterstroke to get the Chileans involved and Palestine were able to fast forward the development of their national team. There are seven Chilean-born players currently involved in the Palestine national set-up. They are Club Deportivo Palestino’s captain Roberto Bishara, Roberto Kettlun Pesce, Bruno Pesce, Luis Musrri, Francisco Alam, Edgardo Abdala, Leonardo Zamora. Some of these names were able to line-up when Palestine played their first ‘home’ game in a newly built stadium in the West Bank last October. The match, attended by FIFA president Sepp Blatter, marked the team’s return from exile. All of Palestine’s previous home games had been played in neighbouring Jordan and Qatar. Since establishing the Chile connection the Palestine FA has made further efforts to recruit players eligible through ancestry. An advert in the German football magazine Kicker was taken out with the hope more players would step forward. But nothing is straight-forward when it comes to Palestine. Two Croatian brothers, one playing in his National League and the other playing for Al Wahada in the Emirates say they received Death threats over the phone, and have refused to play. With such singular stories it’s little wonder the Palestine football team has attracted filmmakers from all over the world to capture their unique struggle. One such film was a fly-on-the-wall style documentary by Chilean filmmaker Marcelo Pina Pina grew up in a Chile under the control of General Pinochet and is also well aware of his homeland’s connection with Palestine. The filmmaker was able to use this knowledge and experience to empathise with the Palestinian people as he followed the team’s failed attempt to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. “It’s not easy when you’re an occupied country. You can talk about how success in football can lift a nation, which is true, but it’s not that simple. “There’s also the fact that Chile is home to a large population of people whose ancestors had emigrated to South America from Palestine. We now have the chance to highlight their problems. It goes beyond football. We want to show the world the difficulties faced by these people.” Said the Chicago based Pina. Pina realised soon into his venture that the trials of the football team were rife with material which highlighting the problems ordinary Palestinians faced daily. There were good times in the campaign such as two wins against Taiwan which included an 8-0 thumping but these moments were tempered by the tragedies which are an unavoidable part of life in Palestine. Pina watched on as the Palestine captain, Saeb Jundiya, was pushed against a wall and searched by Israeli soldiers just two blocks from his home in Gaza. “That was the second time in a couple of months it happened to him,” Pina remarked. Another story involving Jundiya that Pina recalls is when the Palestine players had to think on their feet to reach their goal. “After the Uzbekistan match, it took us 40 hours to cross the Egyptian border into Rafah. It was only 100 metres from the Egyptian side to the Palestine side. It was jammed with traffic that was not moving. So the players, with their luggage, had to travel that distance on donkey.” Pina said. Frontman Ziad Al Kourd returned from this game to find his house in the Gaza Strip town of Dier al-Balah had been flattened by soldiers looking for arms-smuggling tunnels. Al Kourd has since been banned from travelling outside Gaza as he is deemed a security threat. There is certainly more to Palestine football than the joke popular with English fans about being buried in the kit of a supremely talented Geordie. A people are trying their heart out to express themselves through football and this has brought them closer to their not so distant cousins in South American. Tim Sturtridge Bet with Bet 365 World Soccer News Soccer betting tips Soccer Books & DVDs Tags Soccer News soccer football J-League K-League Betting

It's been an emotional couple of weeks of Adelaide's Robbie Cornthwaite. The club's foundation defender has not only found himself unwittingly dragged into a spitting storm but he's also been the target of abuse from his own supporters for scoring a horror own goal in the away leg of the AFC Champions League quarter-final against Kashima Antlers But on Wednesday night in Adelaide, Cornthwaite banished all those demons with a tie-winning headed goal which secured a 2-1 aggregate win over the 5-time Japanese champions and a passage into the final four. The relieved 22-year-old Australia defender dived to nod home Cassio's precision centre for the only goal of a pulsating ACL encounter at Hindmarsh, afterwards revealing the anguish he'd suffered after putting through his own net a week before to jeopardise Adelaide's chances of making history. No Australian club has previously reached the semi-final stage of Asia's premier club competition. “I did try to put the own goal out of my mind as much as possible but the thing is other people do not let you forget it," Cornthwaite told local football website The World Game. “Even before kick-off while I was warming up I heard one of our supporters urge me 'to score for us and not for them this time'. It's always there at the back of your mind." The player affectionately known around Adelaide as Cornflake debuted for the Reds as an 18-year-old and has steadily developed into a reliable first-teamer under coach Aurelio Vidmar. He suffered heartbreak earlier in the year when overlooked for a berth in Graham Arnold's Olympic squad for Beijing after breaking into the under-23s during May and June. But the significance of being handed the No.2 shirt last worn by retired Reds legend Richie Alagich has not been lost of the lanky defender and he described his well-taken winner against Kashima as an "amazing feeling". "It’s something I’ll remember for a long time. It was like scripted for me after what happened in the first leg," he said. The goal will have also erased the tension of a fortnight which has seen Cornthwaite embroiled in a spitting controversy involving Melbourne's Ney Fabiano. The Victory's Brazilian import was earlier this month banned for nine matches - reduced to six games on appeal - for expectorating on Cornthwaite in the sides' heated round four clash. Melbourne have since relentlessly proclaimed Fabiano's innocence, pointing to his previously clean disciplinary record and even going all CSI by enlisting a biomechanist and a speech pathologist to support their argument that spittle had been projected because Fabiano was shouting in his native Portuguese. Cornthwaite has remained tight-lipped on the latest incident in a simmering feud between two clubs which invoke a degree of hostility whenever they meet. His supporters believe Melbourne's passion to overturn their star signing's ban ignores Cornthwaite's unblemished A-League reputation and the fact that, although occasionally naïve in his defending, he remains a reliable professional. Few consider Cornthwaite a player who would, or even probably could, fake his reaction to Fabiano's discharge in his direction, whether accidental or otherwise. The challenge most likely stems from Melbourne's desire to reinforce their encouraging opening to the fourth A-League season. Top-of-the-table and unbeaten after five rounds despite twice finishing with 10 men, Ernie Merrick's former champions are clearly serious on putting a chequered 2007/08 behind them. Sydney are level with Melbourne on 11 points with Adelaide four points adrift in third. The Central Coast Mariners and reigning champions Newcastle Jets are tied for fourth place. Copyright © Marc Fox and Soccerphile.com Australian Soccer News Bet with Bet 365 World Soccer News Soccer betting tips Soccer Books & DVDs Tags Soccer News soccer football J-League K-League Betting

If there was a sense of inevitability ahead of the draw for the final round of World Cup qualifying in Asia, neither Japan coach Takeshi Okada, nor Australia coach Pim Verbeek let it show. Both reacted casually when Japan and Australia were drawn together in Group A, along with Middle-Eastern sides Qatar and Bahrain and potential dark horses Uzbekistan. The two teams met in a classic 2006 FIFA World Cup encounter, in which the Socceroos came from behind to register a thrilling 3-1 group-stage win courtesy of a late Tim Cahill brace and an emphatic John Aloisi strike. In a statement released by the JFA, Japan coach Okada claimed that "(w)hen you think about the destinations and travel involved, it probably could have been worse." He is right. While Japan and Australia will both feel confident of booking one of the two qualification places available in their group, Group B of qualifying will cause nightmares for fans of Korea Republic, Iran, DPR Korea, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - all of whom have at one time qualified for the finals of the World Cup. Nevertheless Japan and Australia will no doubt eye each other warily in the build-up to their two clashes, set down for February 2 in Japan and June 17 in Australia. While most Japanese fans were gracious in defeat following their team's catastrophic collapse in Kaiserlautern two years ago, scratch the surface of the average Blue Samurai supporter and a sense of injustice still lingers. Japan were just six minutes away from beating the Socceroos, with Zico's side wilting under the brutal summer sun at the Fritz-Walter-Stadion. Both Zico and Guus Hiddink are long gone from their adopted national teams, and an Australian outfit that has often been accused of technical deficiencies can no longer rely solely on their superior fitness levels to get them over the line. That was made abundantly clear when Japan beat Australia on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the quarter-finals of the 2007 Asian Cup. Looming large as a potential obstacle for both teams is Uzbekistan; a team studded with European-based players who also turned in an admirable performance at the 2007 Asian Cup. The Uzbekis will be looking to spring some upsets along the way in a 10-match qualification campaign, with the two third-placed finishers in each group squaring off against each other for the right to face the champions of Oceania in a winner-takes-all playoff. Both Japan and Australia will feel confident of avoiding that scenario, but with both sides itching for revenge and Australia looking to flex their muscle in their first ever Asian qualification campaign, the fledgling rivalry between the two countries could be set to boil over once again. Copyright © Michael Tuckerman & Soccerphile.com J.League News Tags Bet with Bet 365 World Soccer News Soccer betting tips Soccer Books & DVDs Tags Soccer News soccer football J-League K-League Betting

For nations like Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Korea and now Australia, the Asian Cup is second only to the World Cup in importance and not only that, it is the one major competition that is, at present, winnable for such teams.

Socceroos coach Graham Arnold has a problem and, like so much in life, it boils down to a question of balance. Not long ago, he was merely interim Socceroos coach Graham Arnold, the man tasked with plugging the unenviable gap created by Guus Hiddink's departure after the World Cup. Now the interim tag has been binned, and the former international striker has his heart set on the long-term post of coaching Australia to the 2010 World Cup. How does he snare the nation's top footballing job for the immediate future? Well holding aloft July's Asian Cup would of course be excellent interview material for the man who hasn’t yet won all over his critics despite his approachable demeanour and a string of OK results.

Global Goals is the new and exiciting system for ranking international goalscorers and the goals they score in international football. The current Top 5 in the Asian confederation is. 1. Yasser Al Qahtani (Saudi Arabia) 2. John Aloisi (Australia) 3. Lee Dong Gook (Korea Republic) 4. Naohiro Takahara (Japan) 5. Tim Cahill (Australia) For the complete Asian Top 30, other confederations Top 30, the overall Top 30 and each countries Top 10, please log on to www.global-goals.co.uk

Asian Champions League Draw 2007 Australian A-League clubs Adelaide and Sydney have been handed tough draws in the 2007 Asian Champions League as clubs from Down Under make their debut in Asia's premier club competition. Group A Al Arabi (Kuwait) Al-Wahda (UAE) Al-Rayyan ( Qatar ) Al-Zawar'a (Iraq) Group B Pakhtakor (Uzbekistan) Kuwait SC (Kuwait) Al-Hilal (Saudi Arabia) Esteghlal ( Iran ) Group C