Victory run afoul of fine Derby lines in City loss
After a hellacious week, Melbourne City dug deep and did what they needed to do to win another Melbourne Derby. Melbourne Victory, meanwhile, did plenty, just not what they needed to do to win.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a better game that Juan Mata has played in a long time. Probably since he was playing for Manchester United, given his sporadic minutes in his various stops since. And yet it wasn’t enough to spare Melbourne Victory a second-straight Melbourne Derby defeat, instead falling to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Melbourne City on Saturday evening.
It took just 83 seconds for Aurelio Vidmar’s side to take the lead at AAMI Park, the fastest goal in the 15-year history of this fixture. Counter-pressing, Andreas Kuen knocked the ball away from Josh Rawlins and towards Zane Schreiber, who sent the ball back to the Austrian in a position wherein he could slide a pass through into the path of Caputo, who made no mistake with a first-time left-footed effort.
And that, perhaps, was the defining difference between the two beligerents. When City was presented with a chance, they took it. They took it just moments into their third game in seven days, after a midweek fixture in Japan that saw them less than 72 hours prior, and with a bevy of key contributors out through injury and a lineup packed full of teenagers as a result.
Yet when Victory created a cavalcade in the subsequent exchanges, sending seven efforts on Patrick Beach’s goal before City would muster their next attempt, they couldn’t. And once City adjusted at halftime, stemming Victory’s first-half waves and wresting back momentum, they provided clinical once more: Peter Antoniou netting his first-ever professional goal in the 55th when Takeshi Kanamori threaded a needle to play him in on goal and beat Jack Duncan at the near post.
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“Incredible, to be honest,” Vidmar said of his side. “As everyone knows, the week that we’ve had has been pretty tough on everyone. But the character, the resilience that we showed this week, it’s incredible.
“Full credit to the playing group. It hasn’t been easy. We were up against a very good side tonight. They really pushed us, gave us everything. But we hung in there.
“Sometimes you’re not going to have everything your way. You’re not going to have anything on your terms. But you’ve got to find a way and hang in there. And that’s what we did tonight.”
A week after they finally got on the board with a win over Perth Glory, the ghosts that had haunted Victory throughout the 2024-25 season, when they would produce some fine-looking football only to bog down in the final third, remain unexorcised. They descended when Jason Davidson volleyed over the bar in the 16th minute, when Mata, taking a break from pulling the strings, fizzed an effort just wide in the 21st minute, or when Mattew Grimaldi was teed up by the Spaniard only to shank his glorious opportunity well wide in the 28th. It was almost Schrödinger’s Vuck: repeatedly putting themselves where they looked like they should have been able to score, but simultaneously shocking nobody when they failed to do so.
By the end of the game, Arthur Diles’ side had sent in 21 shots on goal compared to City’s 10. Yet the side in light blue had actually delivered more attempts on target, six to five, than their rivals across the 90 minutes. Just once was Beach forced into a save that gave insight into why he received his maiden Socceroo call-up this week, producing an outstanding, split-second reaction to deny Grimaldi’s long-range attempt in the 50th minute.
“When you look at that and you’ve had 20 odd shots a goal, 13 from inside the box, but only five on target. I think that tells the story,” said Diles. “We’ve got to be more efficient than that and better. That’s the reality. We’ve got to be better.
“When you have that many chances, that many shots, you’ve got to execute better. That’s the match in the end. Between the boxes, I thought we were the dominant team; on top for many periods of that match. But in the end, games are won and lost in the 18-yard boxes. And that’s where we lost the match tonight.”
Why is this happening? Given that it continues to hold a side that possesses the talent to win silverware back from achieving this, the best time to address it was years ago; the second-best time now is now. And as the Victory boss, who insisted that there were plenty of positive performances to take from the clash, would also observe, there’s not just one reason behind it. Certainly, when your lone largely positive performance from the season’s opening month is against a Perth side that’s won that’s two straight wooden spoons, there’s a bit to discuss
Yet when a lack of goals is a pressing issue, then it’s inevitable that glances will soon turn towards those players who have scoring goals as their main responsibility.
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On a surface level, the stats of the two sides’ leading men on Saturday, Caputo and Victory target man Nikos Vergos, look similar. Both had relatively few shots – Caputo attempting two and Vergos just the one – and rarely saw the ball, with the City man having the fewest touches of any player on the park who played 90 minutes. But whereas the City striker was decisive with his rare look on goal, Vergos once again toiled in vain and was hooked after just 57 minutes. Neither would create a chance for their teammates, but… well… one of them scored and the other didn’t. And it would have looked even worse for the Greek striker had his replacement Jing Reec not had his late consolation disallowed for offside.
Vergos is clearly working hard for the side. And the weight of his goalless run, which now stands at twelve competitive fixtures dating back to last April, is clearly weighing heavily upon him. If he gets one, the cliche goes, more could follow. Where that one will come from, though, is anyone’s guess. Between Zinedene Machach and Daniel Arzani last campaign and Mata and Denis Genreau in this one, he’s not exactly being fed by mugs, either.
“If it’s frustrating for him, it’s even more frustrating for me,” Diles bluntly said on Saturday. “In the end, anyone who plays up top there has got a job to do.
“First and foremost, they’ve got to work hard, and he does that. And then you’ve got to be in positions where you can ultimately influence the match. And so far, it’s not happening. But he’s working really hard.
“He’s got pressure on him as well. We’ll see what happens in the next match.”
Perhaps the only real blemish on the evening for City was yet another soft tissue injury: Nate Atkinson forced from the field after only 15 minutes with a hamstring malady, the sixth such complaint City has been hit with in the young season.
Vidmar has already signalled that the club will engage in a deep dive into its high-performance practices, given that last season’s rash of injuries has carried into this campaign.
“So it’s driving me crazy at the moment,” the coach said. “Back to the drawing board, and let’s see where it all goes.
We’re diving, but we’re holding our breath. I’ll leave that to the high-performance guys. That’s their area. And, you know, they’ve got to have a really, really good look.
“If we can pinpoint it, say it’s one thing, it’s a lot easier. But it’s an array of things: older boys, although Nate’s [ in his mid] 20s, the travel, three games in a week - things that we’re not used to.
“It’s either over-trained, under-trained or under-recovered. So generally, it fits into one of those pillars.”