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Brisbane Roar’s opening goal against Sydney FC last Saturday said a great deal about the move towards robotic football that threatens to take away much of what is great about the most beautiful sport on the planet.
Sydney FC manager Ufuk Talay was concerned right from the start of the match, which Brisbane went on the win 4-3, and even with the scores at parity and without a goal on the board, his voice boomed through the effects microphones at Allianz Stadium.
On a rare day off, I was sat back on a lovely lounge on the north coast of New South Wales, soaking in what I and almost everyone under the sun thought would be a walk in the park for the Sky Blues, against a team within a win in the 2024-25 A-League season.
Sadly for Sydney and joyously for the visitors, Brisbane bought energy, commitment and a far greater level of flexible strategy to the contest.
Talay was livid early and when Ben Halloran scored the opener in the 16th minute, the manager threw his hands in the air in disgust, at a defensive unit that appeared asleep at the wheel in allowing the veteran to run off the shoulder of an advancing defending and chip a lost keeper to set up the first lead of the game.
However, Talay should perhaps have been looking more internally in terms of the root cause of the opening goal.
Frustrated by a sluggish start to the contest where he could sense that his team might have had just one foot on the pitch and the other firmly stuck on the team bus, he demanded his players move up frantically as soon as the ball was cleared from the defensive area.
Early on, the Roar had had a few cracks at crafting a deft ball over the Sydney defence as they advanced and frankly, they looked likely early to find an avenue to goal via those means.
In the moments that led to Halloran’s goal, the ball was cleared from the back half by Sydney as Talay urged his players, certainly in fitting with the game plan he had constructed prior to kick-off, to storm ahead and close the space available to the Roar players.
If you have not had the chance to see the footage, do so, it is an instructive watch.
Brisbane Roar players celebrate Ben Halloran’s goal against Sydney FC. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
As Sydney advance off the back off the demands of the coach, Brisbane play back inside their own half yet remain well outside their own box. The Sky Blues near halfway and expose the most obvious of holes in behind and the deft ball over the top sent Halloran towards a keeper caught in no-man’s land.
The finish was neat and the second goal of the game to Henry Hore looked to have the Roar on the way to a much needed victory, despite Sydney pulling a few back late and making things look a little closer than they actually were by the final whistle.
It struck me that despite the Roar’s obvious attempts to expose the central defenders of Sydney FC with a speed advantage at that end of the field, Talay persisted with a pre-match strategy that a sharp coach may well have adjusted after the opening ten minutes.
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It looked to be a clear case of the modern tendency in football to stick with plan A and have limited options to turn to should it fail. I would argue that the phenomena comes off the back of data being seen as a driver of performance, with mathematics overriding feel and subtlety in current day football.
The professional game is so well planned and executed and Talay was decided in his belief that Sydney FC needed to press up the pitch, shorten the contest area and potentially use the class and quality they have on the ball in the front third as a result.
Instead, it was obvious early that Brisbane saw the space in behind and used it multiple times, including setting up the opening goal.
My Monday morning breakfast with a well-respected coach saw me ask the question of adaption and we quickly diverted to some of the comments made recently by former Liverpool and England champion Michael Owen, where he raises concerns about the increasing role of data in football at the expense of what is actually happening on the pitch.
I would suggest Talay have a chat with Owen and perhaps reflect on how silly he looked calling his team out from defence into what was a crazily advanced position, as the ball was chipped in behind.
I’m certain he will not have the chance to speak with the prolific striker, but I’ll be keen to see if there is any agility in his approach this weekend against Melbourne Victory.
There needs to be.