Dylan Pierias is flourishing in his new home at Adelaide United. The versatile Red speaks to aleagues.com.au about the key to his form and his biggest learnings since entering the Isuzu UTE A-League.
Perspective. You get a fresh dose of it as a parent.
Forget the sleepless nights and nappy changes, parenthood brings out the best in a person. It is a priceless gift that changes an individual’s view on life.
For new father Dylan Pierias, the arrival of his young daughter Ariette has put everything into perspective. It’s that mindset that has helped unlock the Adelaide United star’s red-hot start to the 2024-25 Isuzu UTE A-League season.
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“Whether I have a tough day, day of training or even a not so good game, I know that at the end of the day, it’s just a game and I’ve got my daughter who I absolutely adore,” Pierias told aleagues.com.au ahead of Saturday night’s blockbuster Original Rivalry against Melbourne Victory.
“I think it’s definitely helped my performances. It’s taken (away) a lot of unnecessary thinking and unnecessary stress and probably like, irrational thinking with football.
“As a footballer, if you get home and all you do is think about football, you get that anxiety that irrational thinking, and I don’t think it’s healthy so that kind of takes away all that type of stuff for me.
“When I’m at training, I’m 100% focused and excited to train.”
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The proof is in his performances with Carl Veart’s high-flying Adelaide this season.
Pierias arrived at Coopers Stadium from Western Sydney Wanderers at the start of 2024-25. The former Melbourne City, Western United and Wanderers player was recruited as a winger but the 24-year-old has flourished at full-back in the absence of injured teammate Panashe Madanha.
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It is not a foreign position to Pierias, whose versatility saw him moved from a number 10 in his junior days to a full-back in his teen years.
Since those days, he has tried to base his game on Wales legend and former Real Madrid superstar Gareth Bale.
“I had a similar style to him,” Pierias said. “He was really direct, touch past the player, and run with his pace. When I was in my teenage years to 20, I was trying to base my game around, like a Gareth Bale.”
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At Adelaide this season, Pierias is first among his teammates for open-play crosses (56), while he ranks second for chances created from open play (13), assists (2), interceptions (15), carry directness (75.8), opposition half take-ons (28), total carry progress (1,323.7), total carries (173) and total carry distance (2,277.3), while he is third for opposition box take-ons (6), average carry progress with take-ons (8.5), fourth for possession won (46) and fifth for tackles won (8).
The biggest standout has been Pierias’ game time in South Australia.
He has started 11 games this term. He only started 10 across the entire 2023-24 season at Western Sydney. It’s his highest number of games started in the league since starting 20 of his 26 appearances for Western United in 2020-21.
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It comes down to a flawless pre-season. It was the first time in his career that he had started and played every pre-season fixture heading into a campaign.
“It’s hard to be at your best or try and perform at your best when you’re in and out or under pressure with trying to perform,” he said. “Where this year with Carl, he’s really put his trust and faith in me. When you have that trust from a coach, you tend to play a bit more freely.
“I’m honestly just wrapped to be having that game time. You can really focus on trying to perform at your best and do all the right things. Sometimes when you’re in and out, you tend to worry about, ‘oh, what’s, what’s the coach think of me?’, ‘what’s he going to do this week with the line-up?’
“You can have all those stresses, but this season, that hasn’t been too much of a stress for me.”
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The mental side of football, as Pierias touched on, often gets overlooked from the outside looking in.
It is something Pierias, like many other footballers and athletes, have had to navigate.
“I think it’s one of the hardest things in football when things aren’t going your way, or you’re not in the starting XI, it’s one of the hardest things to try and keep your head at the same level as if you were starting and keeping that consistency and training and that hard work,” he said.
“Trying to keep a positive mindset is probably one of the hardest things to do. Obviously I’ve been in those positions myself and it’s really hard to get in a good mind state of not putting yourself under too much pressure. But it’s not easy. It’s happened to me a lot of times where I’ve finally got that start and I didn’t have the best performance because maybe I put a bit too much pressure on myself. You worry about it too much.”
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It all comes from experience.
Pierias – a Championship winner with Western United in 2022 – has been around the A-Leagues for eight years after debuting as a 16-year-old for Melbourne City.
After winning back-to-back National Youth League titles with City, Pierias became the first player born in the 21st century to feature in the A-Leagues in 2017.
There have been a lot of learnings in that period and one thing in particular has been key to his rise. In his eyes, “it’s the strongest tool in football”.
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“A lot of players now my age or older, would say, I wish I knew what I knew now back then. The biggest learning I probably had was how important the mental side was,” Pierias reflected.
“I did a few years with the sports psychologist, which really, really helped me. That’s probably the thing that stands out to me the most, how important your mentality is.
“If I could go back and tell my younger self a lot of things, I would, and definitely for the boys, the young boys that are coming through now, I would strongly advise them to see a sports psych.
“Nothing has to be wrong. Your brain is a muscle, just like anything else, and it’s probably the strongest tool in football. I feel like a lot of people probably don’t think about that part, but your mentality is very, very important.”
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His impressive performances come at a time when Subway Socceroos head coach Tony Popovic plans for March’s international window.
The former A-Leagues boss has been willing to reward domestic players with international call-ups – the likes of Hayden Matthews (Sydney FC), Anthony Caceres (Sydney FC), Luke Brattan (Macarthur Bulls) and Nishan Velupillay (Melbourne Victory) have debuted since Popovic replaced Graham Arnold in December.
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“Popa has obviously shown and proven that he’s willing to to give a lot of A-Leagues players a chance, and whoever’s performing and doing the best, it feels like he will pick those players,” said Pierias, who represented the Subway Olyroos at the 2020 Olympic Games.
“I would absolutely love to play for the Socceroos one day. That would be an ultimate dream of mine. But if it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t, you know, it’s just a positive thing to see Popa is doing that.
“Hopefully I keep playing really well, and hopefully he sees that it gives me an opportunity. But you know, it is what is, we’ll see what happens. But I’m just mainly focusing on doing my best for Adelaide right now.”
Through it all, Pierias is not just an A-Leagues player, he is one of the competition’s biggest advocates.
The Melbourne-born utility has often spoken publicly about his love for the Isuzu UTE A-League.
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“I’ve always been a fan of the A-League before I became a professional footballer,” he recalled.
“I was a Melbourne Victory member for nine years and I think that I was just always a big A-League fan, and I never lost that kind of passion of being a fan of the A-League, even though I was playing in it.
“It’s one thing I struggle with people that don’t enjoy watching the A-League. I think it’s more that they don’t give it a chance and don’t support their country’s league.
“Why not support the league that’s that’s in your country? The A-League, it’s actually crazy sometimes, some of the results and at times anyone can beat anyone. That’s the exciting part.
“Even you look at the Premier League the last couple of years, you just know Man City is going to win it. That’s not the case in the A-League, which I really, really like. All it takes is a team just to go on a five-six game win streak. They could be on the bottom of the table to now in the top six.
“I think it’s a lot more exciting than what people think. I think people also don’t realise the quality is very good. I think the A-League gets a really bad rap around the world or even in Australia, that the football is not great. But I’ve spoken and played with heaps of players that have played overseas and reckon the A-League is better than some of the leagues overseas.”