El Zorro To The Rescue

By: Marcus | August 20th, 2009

Saturday August 15, 2009
Melbourne Victory: 3 (Hernandez 33, 69, Allsopp 63)
Brisbane Roar: 3 (Tiatto 22, Van Dijk 24, Henrique 36)
Etihad Stadium, Melbourne

el-zorro

Sorry for the delayed match review, I’ve had a few outcomes this week I had to study for. There done and dusted so lets get into it.

As the 3-3 score line suggests it was an action packed game on Saturday night as both Melbourne and Brisbane came out all guns blazing like predicted. As the teams came out I tried to work out what Ernie was going to do without Muscat in the middle of defence. As predicted Kemp moved central, but to my (and everyone else’s) surprise Nicky Ward was placed in the right back position. The match kicked off with many a Melbourne fan shitting themselves over the fact that the player that was the most creative and dangerous against CCM, was placed in defence.

In the opening minute and a half the Roar defence miss placed a pass and Archie managed to get onto it and make a run into the box, where he lost his balance and was incorrectly shown a yellow for ‘diving’, even though as soon as he went down he got back up and chased after the ball. This incident summed up the Ref’s night. He was terrible, got a few decisions right but missed many free kicks and he managed to miss all 5 handballs, that’s right FIVE, including one in our box that should have had us a penalty.

Brisbane played very well, very smartly. All 3 goals came form the right back area. Simply they waited for Ward to make a run forward and hit Melbourne on the counter, where Kemp had to cover the right back and his central position and couldn’t cope, as was shown in the second goal when Henrique cleverly drew in a foul from Kemp in the box resulting in a Brisbane penalty, which was converted by Van Dijk. The first goal from Tiatto was a screamer, simply unstoppable, Moss couldn’t do anything. After the Roar had the 2-0 they stayed back and invited Melbourne forward. Ward kept moving forward from his right back position and managed to get the ball to ‘El Zorro’, who smashed the ball into the top right corner with what could be the goal of the season. After this goal Melbourne tried to get forward again but as had happened in both Roar goals, they broke on the counter, charged down our exposed right side of defence and Henrique got in a scoring position and let rip making it 3-1 before half time. At this point I thought that this was going to get worse in the second half but boy was I wrong.

After the restart Brisbane decided to park the bus and Melbourne showed that they had learn’t from the first half as they opted to throw the kitchen sink at the Roar defence. Fabiano came on for Ward and we moved to a 3-4-3, which proved to be the catalyst we needed. Allsopp managed to control a Matt Kemp cross before hitting a sublime volley into the top right corner. Just like our first goal this spurred us on though this time we did not concede. Fabiano won a free kick just outside the box and Hernandez stepped up to the plate to the delight of the Melbourne fans. Carlos lined up the ball perfectly, knowing that he’d have to go over the wall (he couldn’t go around because Charlie Miller was in the wall…not even Roberto Carlos can put the needed curve onto the ball to get around him) And he delivered blasting the ball… yep you guessed it into the right corner of the net. (maybe Reddy should have just guarded the right side of the goals).

With the scores locked at 3-3 both teams continued searching for a winner (Melbourne had gone back the the usual 4-4-2, but this time Kemp stayed on the right and Broxham sat in the middle). Sukha became the first Thai player to play in the A-League as he was subbed on with about 10 minutes to go. He didn’t look to bad, but he did look nervous and Brisbane were quick to test him, but he held strong. The best chance in the dying stages went to Archie, as Melbourne countered from a Brisbane corner. Fabiano and Archie charged up the wing, Fabiano supplying Archie with a simply brilliant through ball, but Archie just couldn’t finish as his shocking night continued (he looked strange, there was a few times where he was taking on defenders and just froze and lost the ball, very unArchie like).
With that chanced missed the game ended as a draw, deserved for both teams, who both played a great game of football.