Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar has compared his club’s 3-0 victory over Kuruvchi/Bunyodkor to the Socceroos’ nation-lifting qualification for the 2006 World Cup.
But he added there was still plenty of hard work to be done if the Reds’ dream of reaching the AFC Champions League is to become a reality.
“I think we have to be extremely careful,” he said.
“Although we are going to enjoy the result we scored three goals here and they are very capable of scoring three against us over there.”
“We’ve got to keep a lid on it and not get too carried away because you might think this game is over but the tie is still alive.”
Working against United is the travel commitments it faces next week. It flies to Brisbane and tackles the Queensland Roar on Friday night before setting off for Tashkent, via Singapore, on the weekend.
The team is scheduled to arrive in Uzbekistan early Monday morning.
“We certainly will be backs against the wall when we start travelling again,” Vidmar said.
Everything fell into place for United who found the going tough against Bunyodkor’s defence during the first half of the semi-final leg at Hindmarsh Stadium.
Vidmar said the visitors were ‘certainly much sharper, much stronger’ before the break.
“But we hung in there and we rolled up our sleeves and did the work,” he said.
“You get a little bit of luck on the way and we certainly got that. I was pretty content with the 2-0 scoreline and Cassio has made a good forward run and got our penalty for us to top it off.”
Adelaide was also fortunate it’s inclusion of inexperienced squad members Fabian Barbiero and Daniel Mullen paid off.
“What we’ve done with Fabian in the past, we’ve thrown him into the deep end in ACL games without much game time in the Hyundai A-League,” Vidmar said.
“And we certainly took a little risk with Daniel Mullen but tonight he stood up like he was a veteran. He’s a young kid but physically he’s up to the challenge.
“He grew an extra leg in that second half.”
Meanwhile Vidmar said he was ‘flattered’ that Bunyodkor’s coach Zico praised his coaching style.
“Zico was one of my childhood heroes growing up, he was a fantastic player, great midfielder,” he said.
“They were a Brazilian team during the 80s that was fantastic to watch but he’s got many more years in front of me.”
“I’d like to stay in the game for a long time but coaching is a very fickle job. Last year there were a lot of people questioning whether I could do it or not but I’m very thankful the club has backed me 100 per cent.”
“At this moment it’s going pretty well but you just don’t know what’s going to happen around the corner.”
Adelaide is due to have a beach recovery on Thursday morning, a light training session on Friday and then the weekend off before preparing themselves for another busy week of football.
