A-Leagues All Stars take lead from their head coach and show Barcelona they can play a bit too, writes Tom Smithies.
There was a point roughly 47 minutes in to the All Stars’ clash with Barcelona when Dwight Yorke could conceivably have wanted his night to end there and then.
As the All Stars’ equaliser was met with a mix of acclaim and confusion – this wasn’t in the script, after all, and some fans in red and blue looked actually stunned – Yorke’s grin spoke of a man who would have snatched at securing a draw with Barcelona as the first highlight on his nascent coaching CV.
It was hard to see how much wider that grin got five minutes later when the All Stars had the temerity to take the lead, swamped as he was by assistants and substitutes – this time it was the coaching staff who looked a little stunned.
Yorke’s grin was a welcome change from the nervous stare with which he watched his team warm-up before kick off, perhaps fearing how bad his coaching debut would get. Playing a scratch team with two one-hour training sessions together against one of the dominant forces of European football had the potential to get ugly.
But this is a curious Barca team, we perhaps should have remembered, a team in transition under a coach still learning his way. Xavi has a team of skill and vision, because no Barcelona team could be otherwise, but it’s also a more muscular, hard-running iteration of the sort of football we gaped at when Xavi himself was on the pitch.
The tempo is quicker, the route to goal often more direct and in the second half at Accor Stadium there were even – whisper it – percentage balls over the top that were easily mopped up by the All Stars defence.
In part this is because elite European football has changed; Liverpool and Manchester City play more in this way, with the technique to do so. But somehow it makes Barca feel less imperious and less terrifying than the generation before when Xavi himself was a point on every triangle of passes and his team just passed every opponent to death.
Certainly the All Stars weren’t intimidated, right from the start, and there were fascinating duels across the park. Jason Cumming’s sheer physical power, particularly in holding the ball up, proved a potent outlet for his side, and riled Samuel Umtiti enough to earn the backhanded compliment of several sly chops.
Umtiti for one had no desire to treat this as a glorified training session, even at the end of the season; at one point he flattened Rhyan Grant with a crunching 50:50 tackle, then picked him up in a bear hug with enough force to be even more damaging.
The All Stars though were having fun, treating the game not as an exercise in containment – or even a shop window – but as the chance to show they can play a bit too. Jay O’Shea, second in the A-League for assists this season, revelled in the chance to show his passing range and quick feet in central midfield, particularly with the assurance and solidity of Jack Rodwell beside him.
O’Shea served warning with several raking passes in the first half, and the second All Stars goal was born of his clever back heel in his own box and willingness to take the return pass from Rhyan Grant, before freeing Cummings down the line. The speed with which the ball was transferred to Reno Piscopo and finally to Adama Traore – the All Stars version – at the far post to score was an exhilarating goal in anyone’s book.
The real shame soon after was that Garang Kuol, on just moments before as a sub, could only touch the ball wide of a gaping goal after a defensive calamity in the Barca backline, coming as it did before the European side – clearly riled – threw everything forward to ensure they came away with a win.
But the loss for the All Stars was very much of the technical variety; the display was far more important than the scoreboard, and Yorke’s delight as he greeted his players on the pitch at the end told its own story.
The 48 hours of preparation he had had with them had focused on having fun; being aware of basic patterns of Barca’s play, and how to react to them, but also having the confidence to explore their own repetoires.
That included the teenagers in the squad, who played with a confidence that belied the occasion. Kuol’s response to his glaring miss was to twist and turn in the box and then unleash a shot that cannoned off the post – and see a follow up saved by Arnau Tenas.
At the end Barca’s players undertook a slightly perfunctory lap of honour, before throwing shirts into the crowd and heading for a night-time departure from Sydney. Behind them the All Stars went on their own, lower-key lap of the stadium, to generous applause; deserved applause too, for the night they took on Barcelona for fun.
