Sydney FC 4 (Holosko 51’, Bobô 54’, O’Neill 84’, Brosque 89’) def. Western Sydney Wanderers 0
Dynamic Syndications celebrated their first match as a
Corporate Partner of Sydney FC with the Sky Blues recording a bold win in their Derby Clash against
Western Sydney Wanderers.
In the process,
Sydney FC delivered the biggest winning margin in a Sydney Derby history with four goals in a pulsating second half watched
in front of the Hyundai A-League’s highest ever crowd - 61,880.
Filip Holosko opened the scoring with a well taken goal before laying another on a plate for
Bobô.
Brandon O’Neill put the game beyond doubt in the final ten minutes with a sublime free-kick, with club captain
Alex Brosque adding a fourth late.
Wanderers finished the game with ten men having had Anitz Borda sent off for a professional foul when bringing
Alex Brosque down who was clear on goal.
The attendance of 61,880 set a new benchmark for not only domestic football in this country but for any regular season match of all major sporting codes in Sydney.
In addition to the record crowd, domestic TV ratings for this game was 71% higher than the corresponding derby match in Round 3 derby last season.
Coach Graham Arnold: "I don't think it was a 4 nil game. The first half was an arm wrestle, a typical derby. It was physical but I thought that we controlled good parts of the first half. It was a bit messy at times, but that's a derby. We spoke at half time about playing our football, getting the ball on the ground and playing with the quality players that we've got.
“We tried to move them side to side to try and open up spaces and I thought in the second half we did exceptionally well. I spoke to the boys yesterday about having to disappoint four or five players, leaving them on the bench. If you look at our bench, I had Dimitrijevic, our player of the year from two years ago, Seb Ryall and Alex Brosque, Matt Simon and Vedran who's a number one goalkeeper, so we've got depth and we didn’t consider Benie Ibini who is still a few weeks away from being fully fit from his leg injury last year.”
“We're not getting carried away, we've had a great start to the season with the FFA Cup and tonight, but we've got Central Coast Mariners next week at home. We hope that we get a big crowd there with plenty of Sky Blues supporters.”
Western Sydney's A-League derby drought will now surpass three years since they defeated Sydney FC, It was the biggest Sydney derby win in the fixture's history and means the Wanderers will have gone winless for three years and three days by the time they get another chance on January 14.
The Sky Blues ran rampant at Sydney's Olympic stadium, where former Turkish club side Besiktas teammates
Bobo and
Filip Holosko, seamlessly scored the first two goals, before
whiz kid Brandon O'Neill executed an exquisite 85th-minute free-kick and substitute
Alex Brosque completed the rout with one minute remaining.
Saturday was an entertaining night brimming with class and magnificent displays from Sky Blues goalkeeper
Danny Vukovic.
The Sky Blues, who were irrepressible, with clever movement and slick delivery too much for their opposition.
Sydney had the better run from the start as Western Sydney lacked the midfield composure.
The match really came to life at the 30 minute mark when Robert Cornthwaite (Wanders) smashed into
Bobo (Sydney FC) and instigated an old-fashioned melee.
The Wanderers centre-back got to the ball but was lucky not to have been sent off for the challenge, which earned him a yellow card.
Scott Neville (Wanders) and
David Carney (Sydney FC) copped yellow cards for their role in the aftermath.
But Sydney certainly took the spoils in the second half.
Carney lofted a superb curling cross for
Milos Ninkov to outdo Wanderers defender with the slightest touch for
Holosko buried the ball into the back of the net.
Zullo then showed his worth for
Sydney FC with a lofted cross to
Holosko who skilfully kept the ball in play and volleyed towards goalmouth.
Bobo, surrounded by three sleeping Wanderers defenders, was the only one to anticipate the move.
With a classic tap-in, Western Sydney were breached again.
He won’t get many of the plaudits, but Sydney FC goal-keeper
Danny Vukovic was magnificent between the posts.
Vukovic’s saves to thwart Kerem Bulut and Mitch Nichols meant Western Sydney who had limited opportunities on the Sydney FC goal, came up empty. Still, even
Vukovic, who joined Sydney at the start of the season wasn’t expecting such an emphatic result.
“We wanted the three points, but we didn’t envisage a result like that,” he said. “The first half was a bit of an arm wrestle, when we came in (at the break) Arnie (Graham Arnold) just said to play a bit more football. We did that in the second half.
“I made a few decent saves, just happy to contribute to the team’s performance. The boys in front of me nullified most of it and it was just a good all round performance.”
Brosque, who completed the rout in the 89th minute, made an immediate impact when he came off the bench. The club captain, broke clear on goal through brilliant speed, was illegally brought down by Anitz Borda earning a free kick for his team and a red card for Borda.
Brandon O’Neill stepped up and with a brilliant strike scored in the top right corner of the net before
Alex Brosque added the fourth.
“That’s the sort of impact a substitute should have, so I’m glad,”
Brosque said.
“There wasn’t too much time to go (when I came on), but there was still a lot that could’ve happened.
“I think we had started to sit back a little bit, they obviously had to push. It was Arnie’s message just to get the boys structured again and not sitting so far back and try and threaten from behind to give us something a bit more going forward.
“The boys were obviously out on their feet, they had done a lot of hard work for 60 or so minutes.”
After setting the bar high, the challenge for the Sydney will be to string together more consistency than they managed last season, started with this weekend’s game against the Mariners.
“It will be a bit harder to get up for the game, but that’s something we can’t afford to do this year at all,”
Brosque said.
“It probably happened to us a few times last year where we’d get up for the bigger games and for the rest we probably weren’t good enough. With the quality of boys that are here, the older boys as well, no one will let that happen.”
It was a nice way for Dynamic Syndications to have started a Corporate Partnership arrangement with SYDNEY FC by the team winning in such an emphatic way.
Team Dynamic were in the stands on Saturday night supporting the Sydney FC team.
Panorama of the view from our seats
However our corporate sponsorship of Sydney FC player Bernie Ibini remains on hold as Bernie continues to prove his fitness after his horrendous leg injury in Europe last year.
