Well if today's Advertiser is correct you'll have your wish.

Australia to play Iraq at AAMI Stadium on Saturday 7th June.

AAMI Stadium of all f*cking venues. This only highlights the need for Adelaide to build a new stadium. No Football (Soccer) games should ever be played at AAMI Stadium.

EDIT: The date is actually Saturday 7th June, not Friday 6th!!

Hopefully, hopefully they'll squish the pitch up close to the members wing and the two tiered northern stand and then put temp stands close to the east and southern lines.

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?oe=UTF-8 ... &z=17&om=1

Plonking an internation sized pitch in the middle of footy park means that no-one will have a decent view.

Given Port play there 2 days later, I doubt they'll be putting any temporary stands up that will damage the surface.

Does anyone have any photos from when the International Rules was played at AAMI? That might give us some idea of what it will look like.

From my sketchy memory of the 1992/93 NSL Semi Final 2nd Leg at Football Park between West Adelaide and Adelaide City, the pitch was marked closer to the members stand.

The 1988 Argie v Saudi match was dead in the centre. I was only 8 then, but I remember really having to focus to see what was going on! haha!

Yes, luckily it is not at 7:00pm ona Tuesday night though, so a few more may be enticed to watch football on an oval field.

Adelaide deserved the game, AAMI is an interesting choice for so many reasons, Adelaide politics, SANFL rarely hosting games from other codes at AAMI including the Rugby World Cup

I don't know what the relative dimensions of Football Park vs York Park are, but that is what they did at YP - moved the pitch closer to the side of the ground with the bigger stands.

Google maps link

Of course, the pre-season game only expected the stadium to be less than 1/3 full, whereas the WCQ would expect a full house.

York Park is longer by around 20metres...

Plus you can do that at York Park, but will be interesting how many they expect will go to the match in Adelaide.

As if Melbourne wouldn't fill the MCG if it was available. As for Adelaide, if it is so, then the FFA just lost a lot of money!

Something i just found on the FFA website. It may seem peolpe are getting a little ahead of themselves

FFA responds to media report
Wednesday, 5 December 2007

Football Federation Australia would like to clarify a media report this morning regarding the scheduling of the Qantas Socceroos home matches as part of the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying process.

No agreement has been reached to play Socceroos matches in Adelaide. Discussions are ongoing with Events South Australia as they are with representatives of other state governments.

South Australia has been a terrific supporter of football events and we have a strong relationship with the South Australian government.

Adelaide is certainly in contention to host one of Australia’s World Cup qualifying matches but it is premature to speculate that if Adelaide did host a match which venue it may be played at.

As if we would.

We didn't even fill it when we played Argentina, what makes you think we will fill it against Iraq? We get a game against Qatar at TD on February 6th. We'll probably get around 50k to that game.

As for playing in Adelaide, I have no problem with it. It's the venue I have a problem with. But given the Adelaide Oval can't be used because of redevelopment works, then AAMI Stadium, unfortunately, is the only logical choice. Hindmarsh is simply too small. This just highlights the need for Adelaide to develop a new multi-purpose venue or build a new rectangular stadium. The MVP seems much more realistic.

That statement from the FFA means nothing to me, of course they can't confirm anything until The AFC do. The AFC are talking to FIFA about altering the qualifying dates so that games wont be played in the middle east in June-September when day time temperatures are regularly at 50 degrees.

I've got no doubt now Adelaide will get a game, it just remains to be seen whether the qualifying dates change.

It's now a race between two for the Socceroos job too. Phillippe (Omar) Troussier and Pim Verbeek are going head to head. Both have had meetings with FFA officials this week. I'm in the Verbeek camp, and I suspect he may be just ahead because of the Baan factor. Troussier is apparently known as a control freak and he may clash with Baan over the technical direction of the team/country. It's rumoured Baan favours Verbeek and he will have a big say in the decision, so he is my tip.

I'd expect to hear something in the next week to ten days!

Pim Verbeek wins out.

argentina was a friendly.....qatar is a world cup qualifyer, have you looked at the flights to/from melbourne around the 6th??? unlike AFL, people travel from all over you see...it will be good, fly down, see the game, eat good food, enjoy the atmosphere of the place, ride a tram......ask someone who was in Germany or even in sydney for the uruguay game and they'll tell you how much it meant.

You cannot compare the Uruguay WCQ with the Qatar WCQ, they are worlds apart.

The Uruguay game was the deciding game. The Qatar game will be the first of about 14 qualifiers of which 7 will be in Australia and winning this game doesn't mean we will make the World Cup.

Yes it's a WCQ and a big game but there is not a chance it would fill the 'G as it just wouldn't attract the attention of the theatre goers that like a big event.

In the next stage of qualifying when we could be playing teams like Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia etc, then you will see larger crowds because they are big games.

Really looking forward to this one, hopefully we get a decent crowd and make a decent atmosphere.

Anyone travelling down (or across) for this game? Peterss? HD?