Neither Adelaide United nor Melbourne City could land a decisive blow in their semi-final, writes Tom Smithies at Coopers Stadium.
From a Spanish leader to a mysterious female, the influences on an absorbing encounter mean it’s a dead heat at the halfway stage, as the Isuzu UTE A-League gets to grips with the whole concept of a two-legged cup tie.
“It could have gone either way,” observed Melbourne City head coach Patrick Kisnorbo, and a place in the Grand Final still could be claimed by either City or Adelaide United for the margins were fine on a night long on atmosphere – and feistiness – and short of decisive moments.
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Adelaide threw everything at Melbourne City to try to claim some home advantage and take a lead to Melbourne for the second leg on Sunday. It was the antithesis of their disjointed and uncertain display against Central Coast Mariners on Sunday – and the reason was the difference in the performance of their Spanish metronome.
Three days previously the game was too often played around Isaias, the Mariners able to nullify his tempo-setting ability by keeping the ball away from his educated feet. Perhaps sensing their conductor was off-key, his team-mates had closed ranks behind the ball, and were rather fortunate to get the win.
Against City it was clear Adelaide were determined not to make the same mistake. The ball was moved confidently and urgently, Isaias constantly prompting and offering as an outlet when Adelaide sought to play out from the back. When he lost the ball, his application in winning it back was absolute, and his team-mates took their lead from him.
Unlike Sunday, Adelaide were brave in possession, seeking the forward pass instead of the sanctuary of looking backwards. The one thing they lacked was the killer final pass, a fact acknowledged afterwards by coach Carl Veart.
“We had some good moments in the game, there were times when we just needed a little bit more polish in that final third, a few passes could have been a little bit better,” he said. “And we might have had a few more shots at goal.
“You saw our game style tonight and I thought we were very good. We had a lot of possession and I just think at times that final pass, or the pass that we chose, was just the incorrect one.”
In many ways this was Adelaide’s chance, feeding off a raucous home crowd and chasing every stray ball until fatigue set in, three days after the emotion of Sunday’s defeat of the Mariners.
But the flip side was a greater vulnerability with their back four exposed on occasion by the willingness to commit numbers forward.
In fact it was Melbourne City who engineered the greater individual chances, all evidence of the ability Kisnorbo’s side has to go through the gears at such speed – and with such power – that opponents are brushed aside.
Jamie Maclaren, habitual collector of both goals and Golden Boots, spurned three good chancres to add to his tally that he would normally expect to convert – especially the second, volleying over from Connor Metcalfe’s astute header across goal.
Going without a goal since the 10th minute of City’s previous game almost qualifies as a mini-drought for Maclaren, so prodigious is his output in the A-League, and Adelaide must beware giving him anything like the same sights of goal in the second leg.
But Lady Luck played a role too in City being unable to convert their chances into goals. Andrew Nabbout pulled the trigger from close range but saw his shot come back off the post while Joe Gauci in the Adelaide goal made several instinctive saves.
Whether the tie now tips in balance City’s way, after avoiding the concession of a goal on the road, remains to be seen. The A-League’s new format of two-legged semi-finals seemed as alien to the players as to the young Adelaide fan who declared afterwards that “nobody scored – now they have to play it all again”.
It was fascinating to see both sides going for the jugular in the final moments, rather than protecting their position in the tie at what I effectively half way. “It’s probably the first time that we’ve ever done that (play two legs) so it’s something new,” Kisnorbo said. “But for me, we play the same whether it’s one legged, two legged, three legged it doesn’t matter.”
Rather less palatable was Kisnorbo’s unecessaryily sour response to a question about his side’s record against the top four, which in a nutshell is poor – this marked 10 games this season where have City failed to defeat one of the three sides that finished immediately below them on the ladder. His side will, it was noted, have to break that record to win a second consecutive title, but the City coach branded the very query “disrespectful”.
“What you say, what you write, why would I even care?” he added, rather betraying a sensitivity to the very concept – and perhaps a concern that his players might become overly aware of that record in the second leg.
Helpfully Veart was rather happier to discuss it, and you get the feeling this won’t be the last time it gets raised before Sunday. “’It’s finals football, there’s pressures on both sides (but) I suppose the pressure’s on them that they still haven’t beaten a top four side,” Veart said. “So we’ll go there full of confidence.
“We know that we won there earlier in the season. So, you know, we’ve got good belief in what we’re doing.”
