Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar has taken a leaf out of Bob Hawke’s book and urged bosses to give their workers a day off to recover from a major sporting event.
In 1983 the then Prime Minister was riding high on a history-making America’s Cup victory for Australia II and said anyone who sacked a person for taking a day off after watching the yacht race was a ‘bum’.
Fast forward just over 25 years and Vidmar is using the same ethos to fire up the Reds supporters ahead of the second leg of the Asian Champions League final next week.
United is in dire straits after being thrashed 3-0 by Gamba Osaka on Wednesday and will need to stage an amazing comeback to take the silverware.
Vidmar said the sell-out Hindmarsh Stadium crowd can play their part in the upset.
“We also need an enormous amount of help from our supporters. They need to yell and scream and carry on for 90 minutes to make Hindmarsh Stadium an intimidating place for Gamba to come,” he said.
“And I probably urge employers of all Adelaide United supporters to give them a day off on Thursday because they won’ t be able to use their voices on Thursday.”
“They (the Japanese crowd) didn’t stop for 90 minutes and that’s what you’d expect and our fans have been very good ….and now we need an extra lift from them.”
Vidmar said the team felt its own poor play had lead to Gamba Osaka’s first two goals and would go into next week’s clash with a positive mindset despite the huge challenge ahead of them.
“I still think you’ve got to truly believe in it and there’s still every possibility that can happen and in football you don’t know what can happen,” he said.
“We are going to go out there, really be aggressive, really take it up to them and hopefully with a bit of luck we can get an early goal and then you don’t what’s going to happen.”
“Everyone needs to pull their weight, the players really need to lift. If we can put that intensity of what we showed in the second half in as much of the game as possible on Wednesday then I still believe anything is possible.”
