Bruno Fornaroli has marked his return from injury with a goal as a Melbourne City select side went down 4-1 against Chinese Super League outfit Guangzhou R&F at CFA Melbourne on Tuesday.
Fornaroli, who has yet to play a minute of Hyundai A-League action this season due to injury, opened the scoring in the first-half and got through more than an hour in a friendly as part of the Chinese club’s pre-season tour Down Under.
But his return and goal will be a huge boost to the Warren Joyce’s side, especially with a clash against Hyundai A-League leaders Sydney FC to come on Saturday night.
It will be interesting to see if Fornaroli is included in the squad against the Sky Blues for the clash at AAMI Park.
Guangzhou were too strong in the end for the youthful City however with Israeli international Eran Zahavi featuring with a brace.
It didn’t take long though for Fornaroli to make his mark on the match, finding the back of the net after 15 minutes.
Speedsters Bruce Kamau and Fitzgerald combined brilliantly through the Guangzhou defence, opening the door for the latter for a chance on goal.
Fitzgerald flicked his effort unselfishly into the path of Fornaroli who propped past his defender and finishing into an empty net.
But the goal sparked the visitors into action and ten minutes later they would have their equaliser through Zahavi.
That was the first of two goals to Zahavi, with Brazillian Junior Urso and Lu Lin scoring the other two goals for Guangzhou.
TEAMS
Melbourne City FC: 18.Eugene Galekovic, 2.Manny Muscat, 21.Ruon Tongyik, 13.Mitch Graham, 19.Christian Cavallo, 15.Denis Genreau. 5.Anthony Lesiotis, 34.Connor Metcalfe, 11.Bruce Kamau, 7.Nick Fitzgerald, 23.Bruno Fornaroli
Substitutes: 42.James Delianov, 40.Yaren Sozer, 16.Tristian Patsiotis, 14.Gianluca Iannucci, 3.Lucas Portelli, 17.Mark Karlic, 38.Josh Cavallo, 36.Dylan Pierias
Guangzhou R&F: 1.Yuelei Cheng, 7.Eran Zahavi, 8.Junior Urso, 10.Renatinho, 11.HaiFeng Ding, 18.Teng Yi, 20.Miao Tang, 21 Feiya Chang, 32.Zhizhao Chen, 35.Tixiang Li, 36.ZhengYu Hung
Substitutes: 4.Geng Zhang, 5.Jiaqi Zhang, 6.Haojian Cai, 13.Chugui Ye, 14.Marko Perovic, 17.Chenlong Zhang, 19.Jihong Jiang, 23.Lin Lu, 24.Jiajian Mai, 25.Feng Han, 26.Junliang Ma, Zhi Xiao, Yuyang Li, Weiming Chen, Shuaishuai Shen
