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With their neutrality caps planted firmly on their heads, the bean counters and officials at the FFA have surely worked out the possible fixtures for the upcoming A-League finals.
Like fans, they will have seen that a monster match looms on the ANZAC Day horizon – Western Sydney Wanderers versus Sydney FC.
The Wanderers have booked Homebush’s Olympic Stadium for Friday, April 25 if their grand-final qualifier opponent is their crosstown rivals. For that to happen, Sydney needs to beat Melbourne Victory on Friday at Docklands, and Adelaide United must prevail against the Central Coast Mariners on Saturday night in Gosford.
While the Victory and the Mariners deserve to be favourites for each game, the Asian Champions League may well be a deciding factor – not only in the upcoming week but for the whole finals series.
On Tuesday night in Melbourne, the Victory face reigning ACL champions Guangzhou Evergrande in a game Melbourne need to win to keep their Champions League campaign alive. Only three days later, they then face a sudden death semi-final against their old nemesis in a re-acquaintance of the Big Blue rivalry.
The Mariners have a similar task. They face FC Seoul on Wednesday night and back up against Adelaide United on Saturday.
Fatigue will most certainly be a factor for Victory and the Mariners, though at least both games are at home. If they do progress, the following week sees the two clubs travel to South Korea and Japan respectively on Tuesday before coming back to resume their A-League finals campaign.
Back to that possible Sydney derby. The finals format decrees that the first-placed Brisbane Roar will play the lowest ranked winner from this week’s finals. In the numerically ordered world, that would be Melbourne Victory, while the Wanderers would get the Central Coast (giving us the classic 1st versus 4th and 2nd versus 3rd semi-final showdowns).
However, if Sydney upsets the Victory on Friday, the Sky Blues will not know their semi-final opponents until the Mariners-Reds game is finished a day later. And that will be 24 hours in which most of the Harbour City (with due respect to the Mariners, who have defied the odds yet again) will be willing on Adelaide United.
What are the expectations of the crowd at a Sydney finals derby? Well, already, Western Sydney have realised it is a lot more than what their home ground of Parramatta Stadium can hold. Clearly, they were not going to take a “home” game to the home ground of Sydney FC, and in any case, the Sydney Football Stadium will host the Roosters-Dragons traditional ANZAC Day clash.
FFA would be hoping, if not expecting, that a Wanderers-Sydney FC match could set a new crowd record for an Australian club game. Is a 60,000 crowd too optimistic an expectation on a holiday Friday? If it does happen, I’d expect that the match would outdraw the grand-final.
Now, Victory and Mariners fans are probably boiling in their own juices at the moment so let me say this is mere speculation on my part, not a dismissal of the two clubs’ chances. But it is speculation that I can guarantee is humming around FFA offices at the moment, buoyed by strong attendance figures in the lead-up to the finals.
All eyes will be on this first week of the finals because a win to either Melbourne or Central Coast will mean a potential difference of 40,000 at the gate the following week. The Wanderers would go from playing at an 80,000 seat venue (against Sydney) to a 20,000 seat one (against Victory or Mariners).
Either way, bring on finals football!
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