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Western Sydney Wanderers have won two A-League games in a row despite Federico Piovaccari not firing. Coach Tony Popovic says the goals are going to come for the Italian striker, but on his form so far you’ve got to wonder if the Wanderers made a big mistake in signing him.
It is timely that the Wanderers will next step out against Melbourne City at AAMI Park on Friday, because that is a club that is experiencing vastly different fortunes with its overseas striker, Bruno Fornaroli.
The Uruguayan has quickly established himself as one of the most watchable players in the A-League and after five rounds he is alone at the top of the goalscoring list with five, while Piovaccari is still on zero.
It is still early days and there is plenty of time for things to change dramatically, but it would be a lot easier to be optimistic about Piovaccari’s chances of becoming a dominant figure up front if he was doing a lot and just appeared to be out of luck.
But the most conspicuous things about his play so far are his habits of getting caught offside and conceding fouls.
Against Newcastle Jets on the weekend, the Wanderers played their best football after Piovaccari was subbed off in the 74th minute. His replacement, Brendon Santalab, was sharp and savvy.
Romeo Castelen’s introduction in the 78th minute, in place of Jaushua Sotirio, also contributed heavily to the Wanderers finishing clearly the better of the two teams.
Popovic, when he has all of his players at his disposal, likes to include a couple of potential game-breakers on the bench. He backs his team to grind the opposition down and if they do that but the goals haven’t come then he has multiple options among his reserves.
Things didn’t go exactly to plan on this occasion as it was Newcastle who opened the scoring, in the 73rd minute. But Popovic didn’t hesitate to ring the changes immediately after that and he got the desired result.
Santalab very cleverly won a penalty, which Andreu put away, and then Mitch Nichols scored a screamer to complete a 2-1 win.
After the Wanderers lost the derby 1-0 to Sydney FC in Round 3, Popovic said of Piovaccari: “He’s got better – today was better than he was the last couple of games. He’s a striker, strikers need goals. Once he gets that first one I think you’ll see the real player that we signed.
“When he does get a clear opportunity it hasn’t fallen for him at the moment. But you can see there’s something there, there’s that pace, there’s that power. He causes defenders problems, he just needs one to fall for him.
“Like the team, once that starts happening we’ll see a real turn in the results.”
After the Wanderers recorded their first win of the season, 1-0 over Perth Glory in Round 4, Popovic said of him: ‘”He just needs a break. He’s working very hard, you know, the ball either just goes behind him or just too far in front on the crosses, but once he gets the first goal he’ll show his quality, that’s for sure.”
The team’s results have turned, but we’re still waiting for Piovaccari to start scoring. Hopefully it’s a case of him needing a bit of time to get used to his new teammates, or those teammates to him, or a bit of both.
No doubt Popovic will persevere with Piovaccari as a starter. He is a marquee player, so the coach has plenty of belief in him. But if he were to go another three or four rounds without a goal it would be interesting to see what happened.
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