Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Flores-inspired Adelaide beat Steelers in Asian Champions League


Adelaide United jettisoned their poor A-League form and beat Asian champions Pohang Steelers 1-0 at home at Hindmarsh Stadium in the Asian Champions League tonight.


Matthew Leckie, who was playing in the Victorian State League a year ago, scored the goal in the third minute of stoppage time at the end of the first half.


He collected the ball well inside his own half and ran the length of the pitch before a Steelers defender’s attempted clearance cannoned off Leckie’s foot and into the net from the 6-yard line.


Marcos Flores, Adelaide’s Argentinian signing, had an excellent match.


His vision, passing and technical skills showed that Argentina rather than Brazil might be worth a look in the future for potential A-League signings.


Steelers had three Brazilians on view, but they were unable to make any impact on the game.


Sergio Van Dijk, recently signed from Brisbane Roar, was also in good form for Adelaide and went close to scoring on a couple of occasions.


There were 38 fouls in the match - 24 by Adelaide and 14 by Pohang.


The corner count was 4-3 in favour of Pohang, who had much more of the possession than the home side.


Adelaide’s next match is an away fixture in China.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, Adelaide won the game playing inferior football to Pohang. The circulation football was played by the Koreans. Adelaide waited for mistakes to be made.

There was also too much distance between the rest of the team and Van Dyke. Owuso was blamed for previous problems in scoring, but the service provided for Van Dyke was worse than when at Brisbane. Adelaide need to improve their combination football in the attacking third.

I was surprised Barbiero was dropped.

Flores' vision was good, but he was ahead of his team-mates in game intelligence in an attacking sense. I was surprised he put his body on the line in defensive endeavour on a number of occasions.