Adelaide United are flying into Premiership contention off the back of an 11-game unbeaten run – but how has head coach Carl Veart turned his side into one of the league’s frontrunners? The Official Isuzu UTE A-League podcast crew discuss. Listen below.
In April 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic ground the Isuzu UTE A-League to a halt, Dutchman Gertjan Verbeek departed his post as Adelaide United head coach.
Two months later, the competition’s gears began to turn once more. Adelaide ventured to the New South Wales hub with former club captain and assistant coach Carl Veart manning the helm on an interim basis.
Adelaide went unbeaten through the five games Veart oversaw in the COVID bubble, and the club swiftly moved to make his position permanent. He has since turned Adelaide into one of the powerhouse teams in the Isuzu UTE A-League.
Veart’s Reds were the toast of this week’s episode of The Official Isuzu UTE A-League Podcast. Host Daniel Garb was joined by KEEPUP’s Tom Smithies and James Dodd to dissect Adelaide’s fourth-consecutive win in Round 22: a 3-2 road triumph over Western Sydney Wanderers that extended their unbeaten streak to 11 games.
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Under Veart, Adelaide play with style and substance. It’s a squad led by Socceroos star Craig Goodwin and littered with talented local products who exhume confidence and add to the club’s belief that “they can beat anybody.”
“There’s almost a magic in football sometimes,” added Smithies, “when something takes over, call it momentum, call it whatever you want. But there’s something when a team so clearly believes that whatever happens – they can be 5-0 down with 10 minutes to go – and they still think they’re going to win. Adelaide have been infected by that.
“They have a swagger about them; it’s been led by Craig Goodwin but it’s not remotely confined to him.
“Throughout the team they feel like they can contribute, they can score goals, they can beat anybody. And they are proving they can beat anybody.
“(Veart was) almost a COVID dividend… he came out of that (bubble) and was given the job long-term. His background is so instructive; he’s been coaching kids for years in the NTC in South Australia, so he knew about some of the kids – even the really young ones.
“He was such a prosaic footballer. He was a man of limited gifts, he made the most of them. An old-fashioned centre-forward, he didn’t try to do things he wasn’t good at – and yet he’s allowing the kids to play this magical football.”
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When Veart took the reins in 2020, he became the third former Red to occupy the club’s permanent head coach role after Aurelio Vidmar and Michael Valkanis. Throughout his tenure he’s overseen 82 A-League Men games, winning 38 games, drawing 22 and losing 22 (46.43% win rate).
17-year-old wunderkind Nestory Irankunda is the face of Adelaide’s exciting production line of young talent; the club that launched the careers of Riley McGree and Awer Mabil continues to unearth prized prospects.
Joe Gauci (22) earned his first Socceroos cap against Ecuador in March – he appears set to become a key figure in the Socceroos’ goalkeeping union. Irankunda himself took part in his very first Socceroos camp in March. Meanwhile, Bernardo (19) and Ethan Alagich (19) have both emerged as regular first-team squad members in recent times, following their respective fathers Cassio and Ritchie Alagich in representing the South Australian club.
On Friday night, Adelaide travelled to Wanderland with a six-player bench that exemplified Veart’s trust in the club’s youth pipelines. James Delianov (23 years old) was the backup keeper. Of the five outfield players, Alagich and Bernardo (both 19) were the elder statesmen, joined by Panashe Madanha (18), Jonny Yull (18), Irankunda (17) and Luka Jovanovic (17).
Veart used four of his teenage subs in the 3-2 win. None of them looked out of place as Adelaide closed out an impressive road win.
It’s the kind of managerial trust which is reaping rewards for clubs for A-League Men clubs with the confidence to back in their inexperienced youngsters.
“Nick Montgomery (coach of Central Coast) has a very similar philosophy: you have to accept the fact they will make mistakes, they have to learn on the job,” Smithies said. “They’ll (produce) moments of brilliance but they’ll do things that drive you up the wall.
“There are all these challenges with behaviour, immaturity, the issues we’re having with Irankunda in terms of being late for team meetings and things like that. All the standards that are required of being a professional footballer. Yet, he’s bound them into this brilliant team that plays thrilling football. And he lets the kids play, he doesn’t try and coach the stuff too much out of them, he lets them play.”
“(Veart) strikes me as someone who very much relies on the senior core of that team to impart his message to them,” added James Dodd. “A player of (captain Goodwin’s) calibre, people look up to if he then respects the coach – which he clearly does – because they’ve got such a great working relationship.
“(The club provides) second chances. You bring someone in like Ben Warland who went into the Sydney FC team, couldn’t really establish himself, he’s gone down to South Australia to play for Adelaide and he’s really started to flourish. There seems to be such a good feeling around the football club, not just from a footballing perspective on the pitch but everything that’s working off it. It means Carl Veart can continuously trust in someone like Nestory Irankunda for example to come on and make a difference for his team.
“He has the awareness, and I suppose the stature afterwards to criticise somebody like Nestory – as he did in the post-match press conference on his role in the fracas that saw Marcelo sent off.
“When you’ve got a coach there that seemingly is not scared of pulling up his younger players and his talents when they need to be pulled up, it adds to such a great dynamic.”
Smithies concluded: “A different A-League coach made a great comment to me a few months ago. He said: ‘I create the environment, the players create the culture’.
“I think that really sums up that Adelaide situation. Veart has created an environment where the senior players create that brilliant culture.”
