Would you get this in the Premier League?

More heartwarming tales of football’s most stand-up guys. Former Brazilian international midfielder Amaral recently published this thank you note in ALPHA, an Australian sports magazine. It came in response to A-League team Perth Glory offering him a second crack at playing professional football, after his original spell at the club was scuppered through injury.

[Soccerlens via The Offside]

Former Prem star channels his inner Chuck Norris

Robbie Fowler’s North Queensland Fury recently suffered an embarrassing 5-0 defeat to Gold Coast Utd, with four of those goals coming from Shane Smeltz, a man who was playing non league football at AFC Wimbledon not so long ago.

As a means of venting his frustration, the former England star dished out an impressively acrobatic face kick to an unsuspecting opponent. Amazingly, this went unpunished.

[Marca Blog]

Sydney FC manager gets clattered during heated game

The Kookaburra Kangaroo league brought some thrilling action this week, as Melbourne Victory hosted Sydney FC. The away side went 2-0 up in the first four minutes, but managed to spectacularly throw it away and lose 3-2. Sydney manager John Kosmina was clearly having a bad day, but it got a lot worse when Melbourne star Danny Allsopp took him down in a rather undiginifed manner.

This isn’t the first time Kosmina has taken a hit on the sidelines: in 2006, Kevin Muscat sent the manager tumbling, and received a rather violent retaliation. Check out the video after the jump…

Er, but not the English one

We all know that Newcastle’s hopelessness reached new levels at the weekend, but they should seek encouragement from their Antipodean namesakes, who won the A-League final yesterday. The New South Wales club took home Australia’s most prestigious football trophy by beating Central Coast 1-0 at the Sydney Football Stadium.

The game, however, was marred by an incident involving Central Coast keeper Danny Vukovic. After a penalty appeal was turned down in the dying minutes, Vukovic ‘struck’ the referee and was looking at a lifetime ban. Those magic words made Arsene Wenger’s ears prick up, but