Sounder-down-Under is a look at the beautiful game from the other side of the world, written by Seattle ex-pat Drew Dickson.
Sounder-down-Under is a look at the beautiful game from the other side of the world, written by Seattle ex-pat Drew Dickson.
The A-League starts this weekend. For those of us who are fans of the World Game, it is a long winter of getting up at random hours to watch our home town clubs through grainy live streams (Australia’s average internet speed is behind Romania’s and Slovakia’s. There is a commercial here asking “Who is Slow-vakia now?”), and hoping to get a glimpse of our nations’ clashing against each other from links our friends post on social media. But no more! We have our own live games to watch, in weather that cannot be beat, where the beer is plentiful in a nation whose former Prime Minister holds the record for fastest beer drank (Bob Hawke downed 2 1⁄2 imperial pints (1.4 l) – equivalent to a yard of ale – from a sconce pot in 11 seconds while a student at Oxford). The signs all point to us having a good summer!
All of the teams in the competition have added and delisted players in the off season, but the team to watch this year is Western Sydney Wanderers. This will be the club’s third year in the competition and despite winning some impressive silverware already, their off season has been the most speculated on.
The Wanderers entered the competition as an expansion side in 2013 to flare and festivities. Their supporter base soon became the envy of all others as they marched to the match, could be heard chanting at away matches, and lighting off flares in victory. And there were plenty of flares that needed to be set alight. The club started off rocky, unable to find the net in their first three matches, but the waiting supporters were rewarded with a team that seemed to be unaware that they were supposed to be easy prey for the seasoned veteran teams in the competition.
The Fan Wall via www.theguardian.com
The club boasted a relative unknown talent pool, aside from former Japanese International Shinji Ono and Dutchman Youssouf Hersi who had success in several teams in the Dutch Eredivisie. The club rewarded the loyal support of the western suburbs by becoming the 2013 Premiers (top of the ladder) and contesting the 2013 A-League Finals, but losing out to the Central Cost Mariners, ending a 13 game unbeaten streak.
The 2014 season began with an expected sophomore slump, and rightly so. In becoming Premiers the Wanderers had qualified into the Asian Football Confederation Champions League which would see them traveling across the world’s largest continent for mid-week matches from a country that is an 8 hour flight from Sydney to its nearest Asian neighbor.
Again, as though someone had forgotten to tell the Wanderers’ players as they topped their group, despite having to fly to Japan, China, and Korea. And because they had still not heard the message that they were new and shouldn’t be doing as well as they were, the Wanderers managed to take the competition to the final against Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal, where they won 1-0 on aggregate. This feat meant they had qualified for the FIFA Club World Cup in Morocco. The club would see defeat at the hands of Mexico’s Cruz Azul and return home to the middle of their domestic season and the defense of their AFC Champions League title.
2014 Champions via sport-asia.com
Despite making another appearance in the A-League Finals again in 2014 the Wanderers would lose once more in the final game of the competition and two years of travel and multiple fixtures during the week took a toll on the players. The dreaded combination of injuries and a lack of general fitness saw the club slump from an extreme high of two years and the Wanderers managed to finish 9th out of 10 teams, just missing out on the playoff qualifications in 2015. Mercifully the players were able to enjoy a winter of recuperating, but here is where the story gets interesting.
In May of this year the club announced that it was parting ways with ten players, all in the same day. Again, letting players go is not uncommon, but the names within the ranks of unwanted included the goalkeeper Ante Covic who was named best player of the 2014 AFC Champions League that the Wanderers won, Tomi Juric who is a current Socceroo who was on the field when Australia won the AFC Asian Cup this year, Kerem Bulut who won the Golden Boot for his goal scoring prowess with Australia in the U-19 AFC Championship, Nikita Rukavytsya who was with the Australians in 2010 for the World Cup in South Africa, original Wanderes players Iacopa La Rocca and Jason Trifiro, along with former national team player Adrian Madaschi, short term replacement player Nick Kalmar, and former youth National Team player Nick Ward.
Letting players go at the end of the season happens to all teams in order to rebuild and ready yourself for the coming year, but ten in one day sent waves through supporters of all clubs. This year the Western Sydney Wanderers will go forward with another squad that doesn’t know it shouldn’t do well, and a supporter base as rabid as ever. In place of the recently departed, Spaniards Dimas Delgado, Alberto Aguilar and Andreu Guerao were brought into the squad, as well as Italian striker Federico Piovaccari.
They will be bolstered by a backline that features the club captain, Nikolai Topor-Stanley and striker Mark Bridge who is the young club’s top goal scorer. For the massive overhaul the club took in the off season, the club certainly didn’t go hunting for any of the bigger names or attempt to poach from the recently propped up Indian Premier League (see my article about Heidelberg United and their cash splash).
I am not a fan of going out and spending it all on a whole new team. Have a look at Tottenham in the season after they sold Bale was shocking as they tried to force 11 new players into a roster together. Possibly the best example would be Chelsea, who have a revolving door when it comes to players (some of whom come back again for a second round with the club) but do not go out and refit the entire side every season, maintaining a core “spine” of players. The Wanderers are neither Tottenham, nor are they Chelsea, so there will certainly be several scrutinizing supporter eyes being cast about the European imports.
So as Thursday looms we all sit back and wait for who will walk out of the change rooms to face Brisbane in the first match of 2015-2016 season.
