Nevermind the brilliance of their football – Brisbane Roar’s ability to consistently rise to the occasion and perform under extreme pressure is the stuff champions are made of.
That’s the belief of Roar mastermind Ange Postecoglou, who steered his men to victory once again on the big stage as they claimed Australian sporting history with their 4-0 win over Perth on Saturday night.
In doing so they extended their unbeaten streak to 36 games, which broke the 74-year-old record forged by the Eastern Suburbs Roosters in NSW’s top rugby league competition.
Just as they did in last season’s Grand Final and as they continue to do every week as the rest of the A-League attempts to knock them off their perch, the Roar were under the microscope and stood tall.
Given their knack for turning it on in the face of expectation, Brisbane have firmed as favourites to make it back-to-back A-League titles and opened up a six-point gap on their rivals.
With next year’s AFC Champions League campaign just around the corner, that’s the kind of effort Postecoglou demands from his players.
“We’re in the business of winning trophies and even though they gave us a nice little trophy tonight, I’m sure we made it ourselves to present to ourselves,” he joked.
“We want the real trophies. If we want to win things on the big days, we want big performances.”
“We wanted tonight to be a big game, and tonight’s performance epitomises the type of football club we want to be.”
“There’s no point saying we want big crowds and to win things and then shy away when the big occasion comes along.”
“You’ve got to embrace it and hopefully raise your level to it. We’ve been very good at that. All forces came together today and it was a great night for the club.”
Postecoglou was proud of his side’s record run, despite ongoing debate that their run is a lesser achievement because it contains 13 draws.
“The reality of it is any time any team goes on an unbeaten streak, they’ll be trying to beat us – doesn’t matter what code it is,” he said.
“The fact that it’s ours and belongs to our code, football, is fantastic.”
“But nothing really changes. When we do finally lose, we’ll roll up the next day and do exactly what we have done.”
“The boys will enjoy tonight, but then they’ll go back to training and doing what they do best.”
The Roar’s win over the Glory was steered by their international players, who were all instrumental in making things work up front.
As usual, German playmaker Thomas Broich was central, but so too was Brazilian import Henrique, Canadian winger Issey Nakajima-Farran and Albanian goal machine Besart Berisha.
Nakajima-Farran and Berisha both nabbed a brace in the first half, with all four goals coming from patient, precise build-up starting from the back.
“I think our quality of play in the front third tonight was as good as it has been. We’ve worked really hard on that in the past two or three weeks,” Postecoglou said.
“Even though people say we’ve been struggling with a couple of draws and a 2-1 win away, we were still creating very good opportunities – we just weren’t capitalising.”
“Tonight all four goals were really good quality, well-worked goals.”
