Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City remain winless after two matches following a fiery 1-1 draw at AAMI Park.
Keegan Jelacic fired the hosts into an early lead after some clever work from Charles Nduka, but Emiliano Marcondes showed plenty of fight on his A-League Men debut to provide Andrew Nabbout with a tap-in for the equaliser.
The television access provided to Aurelio Vidmar’s pre-match rally revealed the head coach’s primary directive before the 52nd Melbourne Derby: Score first.
But, before the rain had even began to fall over AAMI Park, Melbourne Victory opened the scoring. Awer Mabil and Aziz Behich were combining promisingly down the City left but when the move broke down, Jordi Valadon laucnhed the ball to Charles Nduka. He drove forward, played a one-two with Keegan Jelacic before finding him again with a clever, one-touch flick, and Jelacic drove the opener high into the net.
Matthew Grimaldi found himself in space after a quarter of an hour but – with visions of his cracker in the Christmas derby of 2025 flashing before the away support – his driven shot was deflected and it teetered wide of Macklin Freke’s post.
Melbourne City again looked dangerous down their left hand side and had their best chance of the first-half when Behich found Mabil and he first touch took him perfectly away from Philipp Zieris but he skewed his powerful shot high over the bar. Melbourne City racked up six shots in the opening period but none of them hit the target.
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Melbourne City made the solitary change of the interval, introducing Emiliano Marcondes for his A-League Men debut and it took him just minutes to announce himself in the biggest fixture on the calendar.
Marcondes lifted a clever flick behind the Victory back-line and when it was wrestled back from the byline by Medin Memeti, Marcondes was the liveliest. He pounced on the loose ball and squared it for Andrew Nabbout, who tapped in the equaliser.
Mathew Leckie and Santos were both injected after the hour and it was the latter who made the brighter start, darting past Nathaniel Atkinson and flashing a quick, dangerous ball across the face of goal but none of the arriving Victory players could get on the end of it.
Melbourne City had been the better side in the second half and they rolled the dice in the closing stages by handing a debut to 18 year-old Roland Ballah. He immediately showed an exciting burst of pace and closed in on the Victory defence, but lost the ball beneath his feet.
In the final moments, it was the hosts who applied the pressure. Guillermo May and Michael Ghossaini asked questions with crosses from the right-hand side but all were dealt with, most notably by an acrobatic clearance from Julio Cascante.
But level was how it finished and both Melbourne sides left AAMI Park without a win after two weeks of this A-League Men season. Victory and City will face Central Coast Mariners and Sydney FC respectively next weekend.
