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Welcoming back old boys Gui Finkler, Kostas Barabrousas, and – albeit a very old boy – Ernie Merrick, the Melbourne Victory will have prepared for their match against Wellington coated in a sneer and a few extra stripes of war paint.
There were bragging rights on offer here, as well as – from a Victory perspective – a throbbing question to answer.
Kevin Muscat and his team no doubt view themselves as contenders this season, but when would they start to play like it and, in the process, spray a handful of cold water over their noisy neighbours Melbourne City, who had started the season in searing form, drubbing the Victory 4-1 in the derby.
There is still a serrated edge to the Victory, the same edge that cut through the league two seasons ago, knifing their way to a title. The blade has blunted a little now, and looks a bit plain sitting next to the gleaming Melbourne City ceremonial, jewel-encrusted scimitar, but it can still puncture and slice.
It did so on Monday, through the soft, flabby underbelly of the Phoenix, and the tip of that Victory blade in particular left the Nix lying in a pulpy heap of feathers and entrails. When Besart Berisha is at his ruthless best, the Victory reacquire that musk of invincibility they had at times during that 2014-15 season.
He scored a hat-trick, three goals that have taken him within five more of equalling Archie Thompson’s A-League scoring record (90). His contract with the Victory runs until the end of next season so he has plenty of time to seize the top spot himself, with only Shane Smeltz around to complicate the process.
The Phoenix – and their Victory old boys – started the match with their blood pumping. Early on, Finkler dragged his studs down the back of Oliver Bozanic’s Achilles tendon, earning a yellow card, and a few minutes later a concussive 50-50 contest between Vince Lia and Rashid Mahazi scorched the middle of the pitch, with both players flying in towards the ball, colliding spectacularly, and flying out the other side, with the ball somehow bouncing up and down on the spot at ground zero. No cards were issued to either player; such was the demeanour of the game, and snorting with relish was Berisha, a predator in his element.
He was involved and active in the opening 20 minutes, dropping deep and laying off thoughtfully at times, then at others bursting through with that compelling stride of his, narrowly missing a curled, skimming through-ball from Daniel Georgievski. He used those hunched shoulders to hold off his marker with his back to goal, revelling in the physical skirmish, all barbed elbows and flared trapezius.
It was from Bozanic’s patiently executed lay-off that Georgievski won the Victory’s first penalty, a spot-kick Berisha then smacked in with venom, fizzing the ball in past the keeper’s clawing right glove. He tore away to celebrate, pumping both fists, clearly allowing the furious energy of scoring his first goal of the season to ripple through him. It was his 12th goal in 13 games at Etihad Stadium as a Victory player.
Then, literally a minute later, Georgievski sent in a tantalising pass, that twirled into the Phoenix penalty area. A race was on between Berisha and Dylan Fox, shoulder-to-shoulder, fuelled by pure appetite; it was no surprise as to the winner, and Berisha lined up to take another penalty. He smacked this one into the same left-hand corner, and tore away again just as he had a few minutes earlier. It was his 50th goal for the Victory.
Berisha copped a high boot to the face before the half hour mark, an action in response to which the Albanian made almost no show, despite it occurring inside the box. A few minutes later he was clattered into by Fox, feeling the full force of the defenders forearms as they drove into his ribs. He would stage a running sideshow with Fox, pranging multiple times in the first half.
Having fled as a child with his parents from war-ravaged Kosovo, and suffering through an impoverished childhood as an immigrant in East Berlin only just beginning its recovery from decades of Soviet rule, the fact that Berisha doesn’t shy away from staunchly meeting trial and tribulation on the pitch is simply an extension of the mentality that he forged in the crucible of his upbringing.
His senior football career in Europe had only fleeting periods of success, marred as it was by injury and bench-warmery, a period that must only have added to his appetite to do everything he could to succeed when he moved to Brisbane in 2011. Some disciplinary issues early in his A-League career were simply a by-product of the internal fire that makes him the fierce competitor he is. He scored 19 goals in his first season with the Roar, including a brace in the grand final, which they won 2-1.
He has now made many more appearances as a senior professional in the A-League than he did at all of his European clubs combined. He has, over the course of 134 A-League games, become one of the competition’s most feared, most productive goalscorers. It’s worth mentioning that Berisha has accrued the third-best career goal tally in the A-League having played at least 50 fewer games than both Smeltz and Thompson, the only players to have scored more goals than him.
At 2-0 up, the Victory-Phoenix match didn’t fall lazily into the doldrums. Jacob Tratt rocked Georgievski ten minutes into the second half, spearing through him in mid-air like a 6-foot-2-inch concrete pendulum. A yellow card was awarded and, as Arsene Wenger would say, a dark yellow one at that. Fox was dismissed with half an hour remaining, for a deserved second yellow that satiated the home crowd.
Berisha should have scored his third, scuffing a one-on-one wide after collecting an odd releasing pass, as the Phoenix smashed a free kick off the back of a retreating Victory player, sending through the Albanian. He was principle in creating the situation from which Marco Rojas scored Melbourne’s third goal, atoning partly for his miss. When Rojas set Berisha up to score from close range in the 83rd minute, the match ball was rightfully his.
Berisha has never scored less than 13 league goals in any of his A-League seasons. He has found a home in our league, rising to the top of the food chain, perfectly suited to the arge-and-barge, the flashpoint skirmishes, the ravenous maw. He will likely become the league’s greatest ever striker; he might also be our greatest success story.