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Tuesday night’s 2-1 loss to Jeju United all but shuts the door on Melbourne Victory’s Asian Champions League hopes and with four games still remaining the Victory will be looking to at least finish third in their group.
It’s not the start interim coach Mehmet Durakovic would have been hoping for after his side went up thanks to a Danny Allsopp goal in the 37th minute only to lose the lead in the 41st minute when Park Hyun-Beom scored off a set piece.
The match was lost when Lee Hyun-Ho scored the winner in the 84th minute thanks to some trademark sloppy Melbourne defending.
It may be unfair to judge Durakovic off one game in charge, and it was always going to be hard to make an impact after the side’s humiliating 5-1 loss to Gamba in match-day one, but if Melbourne is looking for a coach who can lead the club to Asian glory then they have to concentrate their search overseas.
Durakovic did what he could with what little he had but there were some questionable substitutions made which were almost Merrick-like. For instance it would have made more sense taking off Tommy Pondeljak instead of Marvin Angulo in the 58th minute, with the Costa Rican providing Melbourne with a creative presence in the midfield whilst the older Pondeljak seemed to give the ball away.
Having said that Carlos Hernandez made an immediate impact when he came on for Angulo, even if that impact lasted 10 minutes before the burly Costa Rican ran out of steam.
After the team’s capitulation on match-day one you would have thought that the coaching staff would have implemented new strategies to at least make the side look competitive in their remaining ACL games.
If you thought that then you were wrong.
Poor passing, long balls to no-one, back play, shabby goal-keeping were amongst the common characteristics of a Melbourne ACL meltdown.
Melbourne’s new look three-pronged attack of Archie Thompson, Allsopp and new signing Isaka Cernak offered little to no offensive pressure when Jeju had the ball in their defensive half, with the Jeju defenders allowed to walk the ball up to the half way line and create plays, while the Melbourne defence was constantly under pressure and at times made to look amateurish in their clearance attempts.
Matthew Kemp gave his opponent absolutely no respect and for large parts of the game Lee Hyon-Ho was given yards of space by Kemp and in the end the Korean took advantage of the right back’s generosity when he charged into the box to smash the ball past Michael Petkovic to earn his side all three points late in the game.
The 2-1 score-line and the statistics lie. They flatter Melbourne. They do little to explain the gap between these two sides. Jeju were dominant for the whole game, don’t worry about how the stat sheet reads, the Koreans had quality all over the park and if they could actually finish then we would have seen another 5-1 thrashing.
It would be insulting and highly ignorant to suggest that the difference between these two sides is money related because it it runs much deeper than that. Yes Jeju’s budget is probably four times that of Melbourne but the Korean side play with an air of professionalism which is noticeably absent in Melbourne’s style of play.
Take for instance half time; the Jeju bench performed a high intensity drill of keepings-off whilst the Victory bench casually kicked balls to each other, with most balls being off target. While the second half started the Jeju bench did running drills in between cones while the Victory bench sat down for the game.
See the pattern here?
It may not seem like much but precision short passing and quick movement are hallmarks of Korean club football and it’s by honing these skills and encouraging this level of professionalism that eventually leads to these clubs being so dominant and successful in the region.
With another ACL campaign ending early, the loss will ring home some hard truths for the Melbourne Victory and its board. The club’s actions in the past month, both on field and off, speak volumes about the lack of professionalism which has been shown by a club touted as being the ‘biggest’ in Australia, and if Melbourne is to again climb to the summit of Australian football and become a threat in Asia then a lot more respect has to be shown to Asian clubs and the ACL as a competition.
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