Adelaide and Sydney draw in tense season opener

It wasn’t exactly the exciting season opener we’d all craved.

Sydney FC were unable to give Steve Corica a winning league debut, but scraped a draw when they might easily have lost.

Adelaide weren’t able to win a game they largely controlled, but survived a late half-charge under which they might have flagged. Certainly, both teams will find reasons to be disappointed, despite the parity.

Adelaide United. (AAP Image/Joe Castro)

Corica arranged an almost identical system, at least from the midfield backwards. Just as they had last year, Sydney played with two tucked “wingers” – Milos Ninkovic and Siem de Jong – and when the full backs trotted up the wings to offer width, the centre backs split and Josh Brillante and Brandon O’Neill would take turns dropping back as an auxiliary centre back.

Ninkovic and De Jong would drop deep, to collect the ball off the defence, scanning ahead for teammates to pass to. 

The clear point of difference, however, was ahead of the midfield, where Alex Brosque and Adam Le Fondre were arranged in a manner that you wouldn’t have seen Brosque and Bobo adopt last season.

Le Fondre was, in fact, stationed more often behind Brosque than he was in front, but essentially they were playing as a front two, taking turns to take up the central striker’s position, with the other buzzing around in the channels. It was fairly limp, in truth.

Adelaide were pressing madly, making sure every ounce of Brillante and O’Neill’s ability to pass under pressure was utilised. Brillante sprayed an awful pass across the top of his own box, gifting Ryan Strain the chance to take the opening shot, but it whizzed high and wide.

Marco Kurz’s team were playing sharp, speared diagonal passes, bringing in Strain and Craig Goodwin on the flanks, often looking to suddenly activate the opposite wing when in possession. Strain and Ben Halloran were seen darting past Sydney’s line of defence, mostly prematurely, with the ruffle of the offside flag following swiftly.

Most of the first half was a match played as if both teams were more keen not to commit the first howling error of the season than they were the first incidence of ambition. Cagey staccato football was on the menu, a quite unpalatable dish, one that even had Ninkovic stabbing anxiously at passes. 

Once Sydney could break through the first layer of the Red press, they had space to start running downhill toward Paul Izzo’s goal. Kurz had clearly instructed his team not to let Ninkovic to lead these charges, as the press was particularly ferocious when he had the ball; Sydney are so used to Ninkovic being able to navigate his way through defensive pressure, that they tend to over-commit and put themselves at risk of being scythed through on the counter.

Rhyan Grant was guilty of this in the first half, and left a big hole through which Goodwin dashed, was found, and could easily have scored if not for Andrew Redmayne’s compelling right hand.

Sydney FC’s Al Brosque (Photo by Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)

The first half looked set to finish as a fairly taught deadlock, that is until its final kick, when following a series of poor Sydney clearances, the ball fell to Scott Galloway. He looked up and saw Redmayne in perilous advance of his own goal line, almost as if the goalkeeper was trying to get a head start on the walk to the change rooms.

Galloway duly lifted a curling shot over the flapping Redmayne and into the net. It flew right down the throat of the goal, and would have been a regulation save had Redmayne not been so far off his line. An error, and one that arrived at the very worst moment. 

Adelaide carried the buoyant mood that goal gave them into the second half, and Sydney were put firmly on the back foot, rocked by some hefty jabs and worrying feints. Goodwin, Isaias, and Halloran all sent ripples of panic through the Sydney defence, but none ultimately troubled Redmayne.

Sydney, in contrast, were producing precious little; Brosque and Le Fondre were drifting, providing zero structure to the advanced areas, and so when Sydney wrested back from the Red press a few moments of time and space in which to construct a passing sequence, invariably it would end in a loose turnover, or a blunt retreat back to the defence.

But really it was more what Adelaide was doing, rather than what Sydney wasn’t, that was determining the balance in the game; Adelaide players were arriving with more vigour at every contest, and were relentless, both in their pressing and in their eagerness in attack.

Mirko Boland was nearly omnipresent in the midfield, and Michael Jakobsen was stuffing every back-to-goal situation Le Fondre could squirrel into existence. 

Every venture out of defence came with such ease to Adelaide, and such difficulty to Sydney. The tigerish activity of Halloran was matched only by the dishevelled torpor of de Jong. Sydney looked as though they were wading through treacle.

That is until, for the first time in the match, Sydney slipped – almost as if out of habit than intention – into a moment of attacking coherence. Three or four minutes of good passing, out of defence into the midfield, then back again, but with a sniff more intent than before. The ball was worked out to Zullo on the left and, out of the corner of the eye, Ninkovic suddenly burst forward – Ah! A sign of life, and a testament to the ever-impressive engine of Sydney’s No.10.

Zullo found Ninkovic, whose cross put a goal on a plate for Le Fondre, the poacher. He clipped it past Izzo, and with that – the first real Sydney chance – the scores were levelled.

(AAP Image/David Moir)

Kurz spent the last ten minutes shouting on the sideline. Sydney was sensing a chance to steal the points. Five added minutes added a final spritz of intrigue to what had otherwise been a stodgy contest. Charles Lokoli Ngoy came on to add further fizz. It was a tussle to finish, but there was no winner. 

Sydney’s attacking impotence will be helped when Daniel De Silva returns, but the season-ending injury to Trent Buhagiar really robs them of an element that might have made a huge difference here; pace.

Brosque and Le Fondre, for all their wily veteran qualities, simply don’t scare defenders when they’re off the ball, away from the goal, and they pose no threat as runners in behind, especially if the midfielders behind them aren’t being given time to measure their passes. Adelaide have their own problems; having dominated, it was telling that Michael Jakobsen was voted Man of the Match, and not any of their attackers.

A mealy opening to the season, but certainly food for thought.