Sydney FC’s retiring striker Bobo came to the A-League with a pedigree and showed it while breaking records, writes Tom Smithies
It all began on a plastic pitch, but there was nothing synthetic about the credentials of a striker who just kept scoring.
The retirement of Bobo at 37 brings to an end a rich part of Sydney FC’s recent history; a record of 71 goals in 114 games for the Sky Blues is an extraordinary return, and many of those goals were a direct contribution to the club’s sustained success over the last six years.
His starting debut set the tone, played on Sydney United’s astroturf surface back in 2016 in the FFA Cup. He set up two goals early on, and added a third of his own later. A kindred spirit as a fellow striker, then Sydney FC coach Graham Arnold knew straightaway that he had landed a real goalscorer.
There’s a symmetry to Saturday’s clash with Melbourne Victory being his final home game for the Sky Blues; it’s his 100th A-League game, and no Sydney player has scored more against Victory.
In his first two years at the club, no doubt it helped to have the quality of Milos Ninkovic, Alex Brosque, Filip Holosko and Adrian Mierzejewski playing around him, but Bobo presented a sizeable catalogue of attributes: strong in the air, equally strong on the ball, comfortable in possession and monotonously efficient in his finishing. But most of all it was his movement, into and around the box, that allowed him to score so many “simple” goals from close range.
As Roy O’Donovan has argued here before, there is an art to disappearing in the box and then reappearing at the point of conversion, and Bobo in that sense was a Grand Master. His first four goals for Sydney were all scored inside the six-yard box; his fifth was only further out by virtue of being a penalty.
That first season produced “only” 15 goals in 29 games for Bobo as Sydney swept all before them, but the year after shattered personal records; his 27 goals in the 2017-18 season set a benchmark that no one has yet challenged. His self-belief by then was iron – asked when still several short of the record as it stood at 25 if he could beat it, his reply was simple: “Yes, I will.”
Ninkovic loved playing with Bobo and contributed so many assists – which, typically, Ninkovic puts down to Bobo’s movement.
But an archived photo showed why they were so effective: and the level they had played at.
The picture is of Ninkovic tackling Bobo in the Europa League 11 years ago, the Serb playing for Dynamo Kiev and Bobo for Turkish side Besiktas. As it turned out, Kiev recorded a startling 8-1 win on aggregate over a Besiktas side that had cruised through the group stage. Bobo reckoned it was so cold in Kiev for the second leg of their tie that his face actually froze.
The duo played at a level most here still probably underappreciate; it is no surprise they hit it off so quickly.
By then Bobo had already played against the likes of Manchester United and CSKA Moscow in the Champions League, and scored against Liverpool. His medal collection includes the Turkish SupaLig, the Turkish Cup and Turkish Super Cup as well as Brazil’s Serie A, to go with his A-League title medal, two Premiership medals, an FFA Cup winners’ medal (when he scored in the final) and a Golden Boot.
He was in many ways an old-school striker, rarely complaining as he took physical punishment from defenders and retaliating in the most dangerous way by scoring against them. It will take a special kind of player to beat his record, at least until expansion of the league delivers more games, and that’s the point: from that very first FFA Cup tie onwards, Bobo himself was a special kind of player.
