Saved by the hand of Theo
Thursday, August 7th, 2008It was good to be back in somewhat familiar company in the pub watching the Melbourne Victory in action. It sure beats being one of a couple people with their faces glued to the television without sound as experienced in different surroundings during our ACL campaign. To be honest I was a little glad when I heard that there would be no extra time and that the game would be decided by penalties if the scores were deadlocked after full time. In a game that was dominated by both defences I don’t think I could have handled an extra thirty minutes of standing, especially after a reasonably long day at work.
I guess in the end we have to thank Michael Theoklitos for helping us add another trophy to our small but impressive collection. (On a side note I hope we have a dedicated trophy room or the like in the new stadium). He pulled off two great saves during regular time and the all important one during what everyone has been describing as “marathon” penalty shootout to win it 8-7 after earlier in the piece both Shane Smeltz and Nick Ward had both sent balls skyward. The penalty shootout hardly rates as a marathon when compared to a shootout between Namibian clubs KK Palace and Civics, who took an incredible 48 shots at goal before KK Palace won their 2005 cup match 17-16 (thanks to the mirror.co.uk for that stat).
Overall it was fairly solid although not spectacular performance from the team with the scoring opportunities being created few and far between. Wellington Phoenix for their part dominated large sections of the match but couldn’t create that killer final ball to really trouble the Melbourne defence, and when they did get an opportunity, Theoklitos was there to deny them. It was also my first look at new signing Jose Luis Lopez. He took a long time to get into the game and I guess that could be expected as its only his second or third game in a Victory shirt). There was some glimpses of what he was capable of but he didn’t really dominate his position as we need him to do.
Other new signing, Ney Fabiano showed some glimpses of what he is capable of with some neat touches but some work is required on the combination with Allsopp and he tended to go down too easily under some challenges.
Anyway it was nice to win the preseason tournament, hopefully it is a pointer of things to come for the upcoming season
