Perth Glory chief executive Paul Kelly will support his three Socceroos stars in doing whatever necessary to play in the World Cup, but only striker Mile Sterjovski is on the radar of an overseas club.
Sterjovski is being courted by Chinese Super League club Shandong Luneng on a loan deal and the Glory will not stand in his way of leaving to enhance his World Cup hopes, although he could still remain to play in Perth’s first A-League playoff appearance along with Chris Coyne and Jacob Burns.
All three players would like to stay for the finals, but also play in the World Cup, so they are torn but Kelly will back whatever decision they make.
“We’ve gone through the last few weeks where there’s been apprehension about what’s happening with the boys. They are committed to the club, their preference is to stay until the end of the season and we’ve had a tentative offer from Mile from China,” he said.
“There is discussions on-going at the moment, but his preference is to play until the end of the season. These guys want to play in the World Cup so that was the agreement at the start of the season and we’re now pushing for that. “
“Things could still happen by the end of the transfer deadline for these guys, but their preference is to play out the A-League season. Whatever decision they make we will support them in it. They want to play in the greatest event on Earth, which is the World Cup, and we will support that also.”
Adriano Pellegrino has also turned down an overseas offer to remain with the Glory until season’s end and Kelly has been tremendously impressed by the commitment of all his players to score wins over Adelaide and Wellington since the 6-2 loss in Melbourne.
“It has been up in the air for the last two weeks and the players are probably feeling a bit of pressure about it, so I just want to say that Mile is the one that has an offer and Chris and Jacob have had none at this stage,” he said.
“Adriano has come out publicly and said that he’s not going and he did have an offer to go away. His commitment is very strong and that’s the character around this club at the moment. There is a commitment that this team has for their football and they ought to be applauded for that.”
Kelly isn’t as impressed with Football Federation Australia for deeming an incident in Friday’s win over Wellington as a melee, though, and the Glory will be defending Naum Sekulovski and their other players involved to the hilt.
“We’ve been cited by the FFA for an occurrence on Friday night which involved Naum, a Wellington player and several players from both sides. They have given us until Thursday close of business to reply and we will be feverishly defending any charges in relation to that,” he said.
“A melee is not the right word to use, but it’s the interpretation of what that word means. It’s a riotous fight or crowd according to the Collins English dictionary. I’ve had a look at it yesterday, we’ll look at it more today and the indications are that our players were non-aggressive and went in to diffuse the situation.”
As for the future of coach Dave Mitchell, owner Tony Sage that he would be re-signed if the Glory made the finals, but Kelly won’t be commenting until he knows if the team is in or out of post-season action.
“We’re not locked in yet, so let’s get to the finals first and then we can look at that. When we are definitely locked in we will look at things like that.”
