Phoenix bring Victory down to earth with a thud after rare Melbourne win
Melbourne Victory's good vibes and surge up the table have been ended with a thud by the Wellington Phoenix, who secured a rare but deserved win at AAMI Park to bring them crashing back down to earth.
AAMI PARK, Melbourne – After once appearing fanciful, circumstances had conspired in recent weeks to quietly bring Melbourne Victory, or at least as quietly as any club of their size can move, into the A-League Men premiership picture. Missteps by what had been thought to be the only two horses in the race in Newcastle and Auckland, combined with back-to-back 4-1 wins, will do that. It was fun while it lasted, as Sander Kartum’s 89th-minute winner at AAMI Park on Sunday, consigning Arthur Diles’ side to a 1-0 defeat against a Wellington Phoenix side that hadn’t won at the venue in nearly a decade, has all but certainly dashed any hopes of a late push for the Premiers’ Plate.
Five points, rather than two, now separate Victory from second-placed Auckland with three games remaining on the campaign, while the eight-point gap between themselves and the Jets means that Milligan’s side can ensure they won’t finish below the Victorians with just one more win. Rather than end the weekend in third, the defeat means that the Victorians have slipped below Adelaide United and into fourth, with just a single point separating them from Sydney FC. Heck, given the evidence put forth against the Kiwis, and given they still need to play the top two before the season is out, perhaps Victory needs to be looking over their shoulder at the Phoenix, who, after making it three wins on the bounce for the first time since January 2023, will end the weekend in seventh.
The end of daylight saving time overnight had given those transitioning from AEDT to AEST an extra hour of sleep heading into Sunday afternoon’s contest, but Victory appeared to be still sleepwalking; lethargically chasing at the shadows of a more purposeful, more energetic Phoenix outfit. Serenaded by boos from the North end at halftime, Victory should have greeted the whistle, they deserved to greet the whistle, in at least a one-goal deficit: the hustling and bustling Corban Piper hitting the woodwork and flashing a volley just wide of the post, while Ifeanyi Eze had an eighth-minute attempt cleared off the line by Sebastian Esposito.
“Not good enough,” Diles said post-game. “Didn’t see that one coming. Definitely not the result we wanted, but definitely not the performance we expected and we worked towards. So that’s something we have to address during the week.
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“There was no indication leading into this match that we’d start like that, or play the match like that. Definitely in the first half, we didn’t start well, and we were stretched at times, defensively. We weren’t good enough with the ball. We had cheap turnovers. It just wasn’t us. It was very hard to find our flow and our rhythm in that first half, and we didn’t. It was probably our worst half of football the year. That’s the most disappointing part, and the fact that we do that at home in such a big match is the part that’s really disappointing.”
That Esposito was even on the park to the clearance to deny Eze, given his subsequent removal with concussion symptoms around 15 minutes later, raises concerns on its own. The young defender had crashed to the turf, hitting his head in the process, moments before that goalline clearance and had appeared shaky ever since. Coming just days after Guillermo May was allowed to stay on the park for Auckland despite appearing to be knocked senseless against Adelaide, just how the A-League is handling concussions – IFAB’s new concussion substitutes were introduced this season, but they’re no good to anyone until they’re actually utilised – has become a sudden and unwelcome storyline heading into its last weeks.
“I haven’t looked into that yet. I’ll address that now, when I go back in. The medical staff did the job that they needed to do. And in the end, that was the decision. At the time, obviously, they thought he wasn’t [unable to continue], and he wasn’t making it known that he was. He would have ticked every box that needed to be ticked from a medical point of view. And in the end, as it went on, he started to feel a little bit worse for wear, and we reassessed him.”
Of the game itself, Victory could hardly string multiple passes together across the opening half, their longest stints in possession mostly delivered by Roderick Miranda standing on the ball. Keegan Jelacic’s 15th-minute attempt dragged wide of the post from atop the box serving as their only noteworthy attempt, Juan Mata was mostly kept quiet and emerged from the second half with his left arm heavily bandaged, while Nikos Vergos, having been largely anonymous, was hooked and replaced with Charles Nduka.
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Even though it ended without a shot, the stanza’s best chance arrived in the 31st minute, when Ramy Najjarine took the ball off Mata and kick-started a rapid move in transition that ultimately saw Eze whip a lethal-looking delivery across the face of goal looking for Piper, only for the ball to prove just beyond the reach of his desperate dive. Capitalising on their host’s turgidness in possession had proven a promising pathway to goal for the Kiwis, with Eze’s eighth-minute attempt kick-started by Piper forcing a turnover and a resulting overload in transition on the left side.
“I was delighted with the way that we played,” Phoenix interim boss Chris Greenacre said. “You have to be brave to come here and play; it’s an intimidating place. The fans are football crazy, and it’s really important that you’re really brave. I thought in the first half, we really put our foot on the ball, and we dominated possession and wanted to play how we wanted to play. That doesn’t happen very often here. So I was delighted with the way we started the game. Melbourne came into it in the second half a little bit more, but I was delighted we created some of the bigger moments within the game. Delighted with the three points, it hasn’t been a happy stomping ground for us.”
A wayward 64th-minute pass from Josh Rawlins induced Jordi Valadon to slide in and bring down Alex Rufer in a dangerous position outside the penalty area, with Paolo Retre bending an effort wide off the subsequent second-phase. Bill Tuiloma somehow worked himself into an open position atop the six-yard box to meet an 83rd-minute corner, only to drag it just wide of the post. Indeed, if the Nix had arrived with anything close to their shooting boots on Sunday, Victory would have been dispatched with relative ease well before Kartum’s winner.
But then, finally, in the last minute of regulation, the Phoenix broke through. They’d hardly been banging down the door for the preceding 44 minutes, Victory able to more reliably get the ball forward, only to run into a brick wall once they tried to navigate their foe’s penalty area. Still, when Eze found an open Kartum to provide the breakthrough, it felt like a deserved winner had been sourced.
Boos once again greeted the whistle at full-time, as Victory’s hopes of coming from the clouds in the premiership race disappeared alongside it and a visit to Auckland, without Esposito and potentially without Mata, who suffered a suspected hyperextended elbow in the first half, on tap. The Phoenix’s finals hopes, though, continued to rise from… well… the ashes.
“We’ve said from the word go that while it’s mathematically possible, we’re going to give everything we can to try and get into that top six,” said Greenacre. “I said to the players before the game, with some of the results that have gone around on Easter weekend, that no one’s going to do us any favours. It’s down to us to dig in and really put on a show. And I think we did that today.
“It’s a positive step [towards his hopes of shedding the interim tag]. I’m probably in the driving seat, I suppose, right now. But it’s about seeing progress on a daily basis, and I’m seeing that on a daily basis with all the players, all the group, even the players that haven’t been involved have been great in keeping the starting players honest. That shows the calibre of the people that we’ve recruited prior to me getting here.
“Am I the person to sit in this chair for the full time? I hope so. But I’ve been in football a long time, and until that happens, I’ve just got to focus on the day job, which I’m trying to do each day. I’m literally going day by day, and that seems to be working at the moment, so I’ll continue to do that.”