Jubilation for one side of Melbourne, despair for the other. Melbourne City are champions of the A-League Men after defeating Melbourne Victory 1-0 at AAMI Park on Saturday.
As the final whistle rang out, Joe Marston Medalist Mat Leckie moved to embrace young teammate Alessandro Lopane. On the sideline, coach Aurelio Vidmar – who had never previously beaten Victory as City coach and lost to Victory in the 2009 decider as coach of Adelaide – was embraced in a bearhug by City director of football Michael Petrillo and assistants Paul Pezos and Scott Jamison.
At times this season, their dressing room had resembled a casualty ward with the number of injuries they had. But now Melbourne City stand atop the mountaintop, their fifth trophy in five years secured. In the end, they didn’t do it in the type of grand final that will go down in the annals for the quality of its play – these high-stakes games rarely do, after all. But it was a game played with tension, with fire and, at times, with controversy.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” said Vidmar. “Just the amount of work that we’ve done throughout the year… all the setbacks that we’ve had, all the hurdles we’ve had to face, and we seem to always have jumped over them and faced adversity in a really positive way.
“It probably wasn’t the prettiest of grand finals but it was gritty. We fought for every inch, and I’m so rapt for everyone.”
The prospect of City and Victory clashing produced one of the most anticipated deciders in recent memory and a sense of electricity permeated the air well before kickoff, with the Victory fans that made up a large proportion of the 29,902 fans in attendance drowning out City’s ‘Happy Together’ anthem.
But a dampener was placed on their buzz just ten minutes in when Aziz Behich marauded down the left and backheeled the ball to Andreas Kuen, who squared the ball for Max Caputo. The teenager’s resulting effort careened off the crossbar, but this reprieve was short-lived, as the ball sat up for Yonatan Cohen to drive between the legs of Kasey Bos and give his side the lead.
Victory had started the contest breathing fire but now found themselves down the first time their foes had got the ball into their penalty area. Making matters worse was that this wasn’t just any opponent but the most miserly defence in the A-League Men and, under Vidmar, the most well-organised of any City side in recent years. Illustrative of this, Santos would muscle his way past Behich nine minutes later and cut the ball back for Zinédine Machach, only for the Frenchman’s effort to be blocked by a desperate diving lunge from Leckie.
Outside of questions surrounding his fitness, few would have been surprised coming into the game that the Socceroo would be best afield, “a Ferrari” was how Vidmar described him. But how he did it was a surprise. One of the most accomplished attackers in Australia, the 34-year-old was deployed in an unexpected holding midfield role in the grand final and responded by helping to shut down much of the flow or rhythm to Victory’s play. Collected by an inadvertent boot from Zinedine Machach minutes into the second half, he would spend the second stanza with blood seeping from a bandage hastily wrapped around his face, refusing to be withdrawn and providing the grand final with yet another bloodied, bruised and triumphant hero.
Indeed, it’s understood that Leckie was supposed to be flying to Perth on Sunday morning after being recalled to the Socceroos, but that now may have been sacrificed for a title. “He’s an animal,” City defender Kai Trewin said of his teammate.
With Victory’s midfield largely neutralised – City adapting quickly to referee Adam Kersey’s permissive whistle – it fell to Daniel Arzani to try and spark Victory into action. The Socceroo had more touches than anyone in the game, many of them of the fancy variety we’ve come to expect, but his growing sense of desperation couldn’t produce a leveller.
“It was a typical final in many ways ... maybe the football wasn’t as fluent from both teams,” said Victory coach Arthur Diles. “It was aggressive, there were a lot of duels. If anything, maybe we fell short in that department, at times, getting bullied.”
Victory had a penalty shout in the 80th minute when Germán Ferreyra – taking a break from being a wrecking ball – had a header from Kai Trewin clatter off his arm, only for VAR to clear the incident. Circumspect, Diles said that he’d been told a technicality had spared City, feeding into his long–held perplexity over the handball rule
At the same time, however, Victory was kept alive by City’s repeated failed efforts to land a killer blow. Just seconds into the second stanza, Jack Duncan flew to his right to deny Cohen’s bending attempt for a second. In the 64th minute, Caputo opted to turn and shoot wide rather than square the ball to a wide-open Steven Ugarkovic. In the 76th, Marco Tilio dropped a cross onto the head of an open Cohen at the back post, only for the winger to send his header across the face of the goal.
In the end, though, it didn’t matter. After one of the great nights of Australian football – moreso for everything surrounding the pitch than anything on it – City are champions.
