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FFA Cup – Souvlaki, Screamers and Sendoffs – Now to the Semis!

Posted on October 30, 2014 by in A-League, Australia, Features, FFA Cup // 0 Comments

The final night of quarter final action in its inaugural running optimised the magic of the FFA Cup that we have all come to love in the short existence of the competition. The night saw Bentleigh Greens host Adelaide City in an all non-A-League contest that saw a packed Kingston Heath complex crowd get their full money’s worth, followed by a mesmeric encounter between A-League heavyweights Perth Glory and Melbourne Victory that kept followers up until well past midnight on the eastern side of the country.

With Central Coast and Adelaide United already through to the final four places in the cup, both John Anastasiadis and Damian Mori were keen to see their sides, Bentleigh Greens and Adelaide City respectively, get through to compete with the Mariners and the Reds to get their name on the inaugural trophy.

The game itself was slow to get off to a start, the first half mainly consisted of both teams trying to get a foothold on the game. The 25th minute did provide one good chance, with Liam McCormick unable to find the net with a shot from a difficult angle, which perhaps would’ve been better off being squared to a team mate.

It was indeed the local club atmosphere that was the winner for the match in some people’s eyes, the club formerly from Greensborough certainly lived up to the event, with close to 2500 people being served the meal of the night, Souvlakis.

Former Bentleigh Greens player, now Melbourne Victory prodigy Connor Pain was a surprise member of the crowd, showing players can stay loyal to their former employees, enjoying the entertaining clash from the sidelines.

Back to the action and it didn’t take long into the second half for the away side to hit the front, when a well worked move allowed Alex Rideout to tap home a simple finish and celebrate with the travelling away support. It looked like the club previously known as Juventus, now simply referred to as the Zebras, would hold on to their slim margin and it took until 3 minutes before full time for the home side to come back into it.

Cavallo took the corner that resulted in Wallace’s powerful header beating the Adelaide City keeper and the game was squared at one goal a piece and headed to extra time. Bentleigh looked by far the better outfit and perhaps the fitter and when Jamie De Abreu struck past Ryan Veitch in the City goal to put the Greens up by 2 goals to 1, there was no comeback for City, who went home gracious in defeat.

Bentleigh will now have to wait until Friday to find out which team from the top tier of Australian football they would take on next, but had on a couple of minutes to spare before watching the kick off between opponents more commonly seen on our screens, the Glory and the Victory, who’s game kicked off almost immediately after the game at Kingston Heath concluded.

Both sides had fairly strong lineups, with the Victory resting a few key players such as Finkler, Galloway, Thompson (who was reported to have picked up a hamstring injury pre game) and Valeri, but not overly rotating their team, and Perth naming an unchanged lineup except for Hersi replacing Marinkovic in the hole behind the two strikers. Tunisian import Ben Fahid Khalfallah opened the scoring within 10 minutes with a belter of a strike from outside the box and put the away side up 1-0 early on.

The lead was short lived though, with the prolific goalscorer of late Andy Keogh calmly putting away a penalty after Leigh Broxham tugged Youssef Hersi in the box, who certainly made the most of the contact. The remainder of the half struggled to get a flow to it, and only Berisha being subbed off with a groin injury made headlines before halftime.

Melbourne’s weakness of defending set pieces was shown up once again when Keogh headed home from an unmarked position to put the home side into the lead, and it looked to go from bad to worse for the Victory as Delpierre clutched his hamstring and was forced to be subbed off.

Victory attained a free kick in a reasonable position outside the box in the second minute of injury time of the second half, and after his antics last season again the Wanderers, there was only one man to step up for the free kick, Gui Finkler. The Brazilian certainly stepped up and curled the ball beautifully into the corner of the net and the game was tied at two goals each and went into extra time.

Marinkovic replaced Hersi very early on into extra time and his impact was certainly felt straight away after setting up a beautiful chance for Keogh to get his hat trick, until he was denied by a great defensive piece of work my Mahazi. The game changed dramatically when Victory fullback Georgievski was sent off the field for a second yellow after a poor challenge on Jamieson.

Perth took the initiative, and after De Silva capitalised on a clinical counter attack against a severely undermanned Victory defence, Perth looked certainties to win the game as Victory looked toothless in attack. Marinkovic would put the game into no doubt after Keogh unselfishly set him up to drive an attempt past Coe and make it 4-2 to the Glory.

To add to Victory’s problems, Leijer received a second yellow in the aftermath of Perth’s fourth goal and left Victory with 9 men to see out the rest of the match which ended 4-2 to the home side, meaning Perth will go through to the semi finals to meet one of Adelaide United, Central Coast or Bentleigh Greens.

Victory will now be without Leijer and Georgievski for the fixture on Monday Night against Wellington at Aami Park, as well as perhaps Berisha, Thompson and Delpierre, who all picked up injuries on the night, while Perth will need to assess Hersi but remained relatively unscathed before their match against Newcastle at home this weekend.

All in all, it was a great night for Australian football and the FFA Cup has shown once again its worth to the game in this country in not only growing the game at smaller clubs and at the grassroots level, but also providing fans with excellent midweek entertainment.

Written by Luke Hall – Twitter : @hally_101

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