Opinion

Muscat hails Victory's firm resolve to beat adversity in Big Blue triumph

Melbourne Victory would have had every right to get that 'not again' feeling when they were the victims of a laughable penalty decision in their match with Sydney FC.

Kevin Muscat

Kevin Muscat celebrates Victory's win Source: Getty Images

To their credit, however, they did not let a highly controversial decision put them off their game.

Minutes after taking the lead through Swedish World Cup star Ola Toivonen, Victory were stunned when referee Peter Green gifted Sydney a penalty after a legitimate challenge from Terry Antonis on Paulo Retre.

Victory protested hotly but VAR was not brought into action because the incident was deemed to not be a clear and obvious mistake.

Adam Le Fondre converted when he was first to the rebound after Lawrence Thomas had blocked his initial shot.



Victory coach Kevin Muscat was full of praise for his players for not letting the incident unsettle them and disrupt their game.

Victory had been the recipients of a few bad calls in their clashes with Sydney in the last two seasons and Muscat would have been fully justified in thinking that recent history was repeating itself in front of his own eyes.

"We suffered a few unfortunate decisions. A similar thing happened five weeks ago in the Melbourne derby when an incorrect decision went against us," Muscat said later.

"We fell away in the second half of that game and I am really pleased with my players' attitude today because they accepted the bad call and moved on. I thought we were outstanding in the second half."

Victory went on to win 2-1 with a 70th minute penalty from Keisuke Honda, who picked himself up from the ground after being unnecessarily felled by Jop van der Linden to easily beat Andrew Redmayne.

After a long series of defeats against the Sky Blues, that included a grand final loss on penalties in 2017, Victory recorded a second straight away win over their most fierce rivals after having beaten them by the same score in last season's major semi-final.

"I never felt the monkey was on our back at the time," Muscat said when it was suggested to him that the tide in the 'Big Blue' was turning in his side's favour.

"In terms of results we had a bad run and we do analyse results but throughout that period the performances were good and results could have gone either way."
The champions were probably fortunate to go home with all three points as Sydney did enough to share the spoils.
The Sky Blues played reasonably well in the first half when they kept the ball on the ground but were forced to play far too many long balls after the break as they tried to first break the deadlock then save the match.

This played into the hands of Victory's tall defenders Thomas Deng and Georg Niedermeier and Lawrence who were all outstanding.

After five rounds of the A-League, Muscat's team are emerging as Perth Glory's main rivals for the premiership.

Glory's blistering start to the season continued with a last-gasp 3-2 win over Central Coast Mariners that gave Tony Popovic's side a four-point lead over Victory at the top of the table.

All in all, the Big Blue turned out to be another titanic contest that was played in the heartland of suburban Sydney.

Jubilee Oval was filled almost to capacity with 19,081 fans and provided a much better atmosphere than that which we have grown accustomed to in larger and half-empty venues.

Which begs the million-dollar question: was the A-League overly optimistic when it chose to play games in large arenas like Suncorp, Etihad, Allianz or Westpac when there was little chance of them being sufficiently filled except for very rare occasions?

But that's a story for another day.


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4 min read
Published 26 November 2018 10:03am
By Philip Micallef

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