Adelaide United coach Rini Coolen felt the Reds deserved more from their thrilling 3-2 Elimination Final loss to Gold Coast United which saw their season come to an end.
The Reds went behind to a Shane Smeltz wonder goal just before half time, but took the lead in the second half with goals to Sergio van Dijk and Mathew Leckie before Smeltz and Bruce Djite found the back of the net in quick succession.
Coolen conceded the loss was difficult to take with the match such an even contest over the 90 minutes, but said ultimately the Reds weren’t good enough on the day to defeat GCU.
“It wasn’t a fantastic, good football game,” he said.
“Losing a game sometimes you accept it if the other team was much better. That was not today, definitely not. I thought we deserved a little bit more.”
“It’s hard to accept because they were not better than us. You can call it unlucky but you can also call it that it wasn’t good enough today.”
“You win or lose as a team and that’s definitely what happened today. It wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t necessary.”
Smeltz opened the scoring for GCU with a thunderous 30-metre drive that picked out the top corner of Eugene Galekovic’s goal after the Reds defence had backed off the former Adelaide striker.
Adelaide’s defence also looked wobbly when Gold Coast grabbed their second before Joel Porter was felled in box allowing Smeltz to convert the spot kick to complete his double.
Coolen acknowledged the Reds had made too many mistakes, particularly in defence and failed to capitalise on their chances.
“You also have to look back at a couple of mistakes we made,” he said.
“We gave him too much space, it was a fantastic goal to be honest, but if you look at the defence there could have been more pressure on the ball.”
“If you want to win a game like this you have to make less mistakes and we created enough chances but we had to score a couple more goals.”
Despite crashing out of the finals, Coolen said he was pleased with his maiden Hyundai A-League campaign and is looking forward to the future after signing on with Adelaide until 2015.
“I’m real happy, if you see the whole season I think it was a real fantastic season, but at the end real disappointing if you lose a game like today,” he said.
“But, we also have to make another step in our team. What I’ve seen in the last couple of months with the selections we’ve had available is a fantastic group.”
“It’s a fantastic team, there’s a lot of good footballers, a lot of good balance in it and a lot of speed. I’m really happy with the squad that is available now.”
