Coming into this match, FC coach Branko Culina said his side needed the ‘X factor’ — that little extra killer instinct that can capitalise on the groundwork a team lays out voer the course of match. Sydney have displayed plenty of the latter over the course of their ACL campaign but have failed to find the former, and with it, glory.
This was never more true than tonight, where a stadium of 60,000 Urawa diehards was at times put into stunned silence by a disciplined, fluid Skyblue side who refused to let the occaision or the truly intimidating banks of Reds fans get to them. Urawa were nullified for long passages of play, upfront striker and Brazillian international Washington met his match in Nikolai Topor-Stanley and Mark Rudan, while Zadkovich and Carney layed on cross after cross at unsettled Reds goalkeeper Tsuzuki. However, when crunch-time came the team from the Harbour City just couldn’t hit the net.
This wouldn’t have been fatal had they managed to make their oodles of possession and shots on goal count against Shanghai on matchday 5, or had Clint Bolton held that save against Urawa, but time and again, that little gap has gone on to become the dividing line between victory and defeat. It’s been a glorious campaign of FC’s part, with thrilling matches and triumphs aplenty, but for all their sucesses Culina’s men will go away from it kicking themselves at what might have been.
2 responses so far ↓
Bring Back CL's blog // May 24, 2007 at 9:30 am
very arrogant to believe we can beat teams who are in competition when we are not.
Either increase the number of teams in A-league or make it 4 rounds and put the season back as well.
Leinad // May 24, 2007 at 10:29 am
Not a lot we can do about it at the moment, Homer. We can’t move the season to autumn-winter as we’d get killed by League and AFL over stadium allocation and crowds. By the sounds of it the league will expand in ‘08-09 Season; FNQ and the ‘Gong being the most advanced bidders, and we should get a healthy twelve teams by ‘11-12.
I didn’t think fitness was too much of factor last night – we just did not have a striker worth the name. Zdrillic tries hard, but he just can’t get it on, Casey was about the only impact player Branko had up his sleeve (and that’s being generous) and Glavas, Spencer and McFlynn made for a pretty useless bench when we needed a 80-minute miracle.