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When you attend your first Sydney derby at Parramatta Stadium, you expect to be blown away. You expect a cracking contest, a match where both clubs are giving everything in order to claim bragging rights over their fierce rivals, both on and off the pitch.
Unfortunately, in the most recent clash between Western Sydney Wanderers and Sydney FC, one competitor failed to deliver. Only one team was proactively gunning for three points, while the other was happy to play the role of underdog.
Somehow, despite rarely breaking outside their own half, the Sky Blues emerged 2-1 victors on Saturday night. It was a pragmatic, clinical display, but it made for a rather dull contest. The noise in the stands, from both sets of supporters, was the main drawcard.
The Wanderers, although probing constantly to find a way through two banks of four, did not help matters with some poor passing, uncharacteristic for a team that in recent weeks has been hailed for their new style under Tony Popovic.
Throughout the opening 20 minutes, however, the home side dominated, with Dario Vidosic, Mitch Nichols and Romeo Castelen (twice) seeing efforts saved, blocked or sent wide.
Sydney’s first meaningful counter-attack resulted in a corner, from which Jacques Faty poked home the opener. It came from nowhere and it rattled the home team.
The Wanderers fell apart for the rest of the first period, their distribution quickly descending to the point where Filip Holosko should have capitalised on an errant misplaced pass across goal from Dimas Delgado just before half-time.
Yet Western Sydney continued their ardent approach following the break and deservedly equalised through a fine finish from Vidosic after neat build-up from Mark Bridge and Castelen.
Substitute Kearyn Baccus was then left to rue a great chance to send Wanderland into raptures and become a club hero, losing a one-on-one with Vedran Janjetovic, before Shane Smeltz knocked home the winner from a late free kick.
Two set pieces, two goals. That pretty much summed up Sydney FC’s performance.
It was disciplined, gritty and effective football from the Sky Blues, who have been impressively transformed into a defensive machine by Graham Arnold this season. They have conceded just 13 goals from 15 games, yet the football has not made a good spectacle.
For a manager who earlier this year complained about teams continually adopting defensive and negative tactics due to a fear of losing, it is astonishing that Arnold so willingly blunts his team’s attacking instincts, which holds talented individuals in Milos Ninkovic, Holosko and Milos Dimitrijevic.
“I think some coaches are setting out not to lose. They don’t want to lose their job. In the past, you’d get five or six coaches every year that would get the sack,” Arnold said back in November.
“Some coaches are setting out to not lose, but I’m not one, because I’m not worried. Some are a big negative at the moment.
“Teams aren’t coming to beat us, they’re coming to stop us. We’ve just got to be that little bit better.”
Sounds exactly how Sydney FC approached their clash with the Wanderers.
When the most well-known defensive system, catenaccio, first emerged into mainstream consciousness in northeastern Italy, coach Nereo Rocco was looking for a way to turn Triestina from relegation fodder into competitors.
The club had only just avoided relegation from Serie A in 1946-47, but in Rocco’s first season they finished joint second. Recognising the team’s limitations, Rocco set his team up to prevent opponents from playing football, frustrating them and hitting on the counter.
It was a tactic that Jonathan Wilson labelled the “right of the weak” in his excellent Inverting the Pyramid, a style adopted by teams with smaller budgets that aimed to suffocate their more illustrious opponents when they attacked.
Of course, Arnold has not implemented traditional catenaccio at Sydney FC, but he has followed a route of defensive football normally adopted by smaller clubs with no other option in their quest to match the clout of bigger rivals.
It may be his style, but it is disappointing for a neutral to see the Sky Blues play such football. Sydney FC are not a small club; Arnold is no longer in charge of the Central Coast Mariners.
Sydney FC supporters likely do not care how their team sets up tactically as long as they keep producing victories, though surely it will not help convince armchair fans to attend matches.
Arnold most certainly is not affected by any such criticism.
And why would he? His methods are beginning to work in Sydney, and he boasts the highest winning percentage of any full-time A-League manager with 51 per cent. Last season he led the Sky Blues to runners-up in both the premiership and championship.
However, Sydney FC are due success. For such a big club, with the advantage of living in one of Australia’s biggest cities and the sponsorship dollars and viewing numbers that comes with that, they have underachieved (for various reasons).
If Arnold delivers a trophy, his defensive style will be vindicated. But if he doesn’t?
Sydney FC are a big cat and big cats have the ability to play exciting football, more so than smaller opponents. They have sacrificed aesthetically pleasing performances for results, yet if silverware does not emerge then the approach will be hard to defend.
Rocco ended up implementing catenaccio at a big club with AC Milan, but at least that version took an attractive form where the libero was the stylish ball-playing Cesare Maldini, rather than the hoof-it-long Ivano Blason (Triestina).
That AC Milan team were experts in shutting out opponents, but they also proactively chased games and scored a lot of goals as they won two European Cups.
Whether Arnold finds similar success at a big club using his own brand of defensive football could define his career. If he does not deliver silverware to Sydney FC then his tenure will not only be marked down as a failure, but as an unnecessarily ugly failure.
As we all know, catenaccio was, eventually, destroyed by Total Football, and there are a number of A-League clubs attempting to play some similarly attractive stuff.
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