Adelaide United prove that red goes faster, but not always forward

Red-hot or red-alert – how do you like your football?

If you’re of the former variety, you’ll be loving the form of English Premier League club Liverpool under manager Jurgen Klopp.

If you’re of the latter – congratulations, you must be an Adelaide United fan, following the A-League.

And what’s hot right now is heavy metal.

That’s the pace at which Klopp likes to operate, apparently. He said so himself.

And when he did, he made a comparison to Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger to go with it.

“He likes having the ball, playing football, passes. It’s like an orchestra,” Klopp said of Wenger’s style.

“But it’s a silent song. I like heavy metal.”

Even the EPL’s own social media platform picked up on the comparison and ran with it.

By the time Liverpool hosted Arsenal in January 2016, there were cartoon drawings of Klopp brandishing a severely-chopped six-string axe while Wenger deftly leans into a violin.

While one may not expect to see Klopp start breaking into a Chuck Berry-Angus Young duckwalk on the touchline anytime soon, which is a shame, the man self-dubbed “The Normal One” does have more than an air of what one would assume to be a mature-age Kurt Cobain about him.

It’s only Klopp’n’roll but they like it out there at Anfield.

Talking to London’s Daily Mail back in April last year, as his then-newish Liverpool side eliminated his former club Borussia Dortmund from the second-tier continental Europa League, Klopp told it this way.

“I want my team to win – that’s it,” he said.

“I want our game to be easy to enjoy, because I think the only real reason for football is to entertain the crowd. If they (fans) come twice and say it’s boring, then they’ll think about whether they want to come again. We are a ball possession team, but nobody realises it because my image is pressing and counter-pressing.”

Essentially, it’s the essentials first for Klopp.

Fitter. Happier. More productive.

As Sky Sports UK once put it, Klopp’s “to-do list” at Anfield was pretty short.

Fitness. Excitement. Trophies. In that order.

Mission all but accomplished so far in just over a year at the helm.

By comparison, Guillermo Amor’s Adelaide Reds would appear to be going in a different direction.

Instead, they’re putting their best feet backwards.

If Wenger has been conducting an orchestra for 20 years and Klopp’s rallying the heavy metal militia, then what on Earth’s been going on at Hindmarsh Stadium at the bottom end of said Earth?

Less than 12 months ago, Adelaide United were insanely unlikely A-League title holders.

Now they give the impression of a team barely in tune with each other, let alone coach Amor.

Orchestral? Metal? Try sans-synchronised sludge. Perhaps through a Melodica. Otherwise known as a retro plastic blow keyboard.

But right now the air tube is kinked and twisted, the keys stuck fast to the board.

Amor would no doubt be aiming for at least a Korg Monotron analogue ribbon synthesizer (Keith Emerson would have) by season’s end. Or maybe he’d settle for a Yamaha Keytar (wouldn’t we all?).

But any synthesis of Barcelona pedigree with good old Aussie bash-n-crash hasn’t come off at all since the start of this season.

Yet Amor persists with the classic crazed claymation inventor’s line from Wallace and Gromit: “Hang in there – everything’s under control!”

Earlier in the season, it was a set of utter frustration-a-rama fouls that cost them. Multiple times.

Seriously lacking in discipline, just ending up executing clumsy, silly fouls. Nothing reckless or nasty.

But it was all the same in the no-worries world of the eminently amiable Amor.

“Our team’s very good,” Amor said after another lacklustre performance by his players.

“We learn and improve every day. There’s no problem. I prefer not to speak. It’s 50-50 today and that’s football.”

Shades of Wenger-esque denial plus a dash of Amor’s seemingly self-perfected disbelief.

At what point does he face the cameras straight-on, straight-faced and simply tell it like it is? We currently suck big-time at football? Our squad is stuffed? Or see-ya-later-sir?

That’s football.

Perhaps Amor should be fortunate that he doesn’t work in the English premiership.

Arsenal supporters have been gunning for the Gunners’ gaffer to be gone for years. And Wenger’s been at the club two decades.

Amor’s currently running at less than two years.

Can you picture him sitting in the Hindmarsh rubble, looking for someone else to chuck in absolute rage, frustration and anger? A spare dressing-room door to wrench from its hinges? The trophy mantelpiece hauled into the debris?

Or why not just try a header with the face of the match clock that overhangs Manton Street?

Red cars go faster, they say? At least they’re perceived to be, especially by those sent out to stop them.

It just depends on who’s wrestling with the wheel.

“I like smoke and lightning. Heavy metal thunder. Racing with the wind. And the feeling that I’m under.”

That’s be Klopp, then. “Born to be wild”, as Steppenwolf once sang in their meteoric, hard-rocking highway hit of 1968.

Wenger? Born to be styled, perhaps?

Amor? Born to be mild.

Red goes all right. But sometimes backwards. Faster and faster.

Just ask Adelaide.