The weather was more befitting of a chilled and dreary Glasgow evening and with AAMI park filled with fans in their Green and White of their beloved Celtic, you’d be forgiven for forgetting you were in fact in Melbourne as the South End burst in to a rousing rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
Glasgow Celtic, are one of Europes largest football clubs and only a week away from it’s opening game against Hibernian FC in Edinburgh, while Melbourne Victory are only a few days into their pre-season after a strenuous Asian Champions League Campaign.
The teams weren’t miles apart as the geography expresses, Melbourne fought tooth and nail with their wealthy counterparts, only a 78th minute deflection separated the sides and beat a gallant ex-Glory goalkeeper Tando Velaphi.
Having joined Melbourne prior to the recently completed Asian Champions League Velaphis improvement has been enormous as he works closely with Steve Mautone, a goalkeeper coach who’s undoubtedly taken guys like Michael Theoklitos, Eugene Galekovic and Mitchell Langerak to the next level.
News had prematurely surfaced that the Victory had supposedly signed former Liverpool FC youth custodian Dean Bouzanis, Velaphi couldn’t have strengthened his grip on the starting position any stronger and it looks as if Bouzanis was on the first flight back to Europe to find that elusive number one keeper spot.
Taking to the field for the first time in their new Adidas cuts, Melbourne looked the part on the field against the 42-time league champions, Danny Allsopp narrowly missing an opportunity to send Melbourne in front, while the towering striker Georgios Samaras was denied twice one-on-one by Velaphi in front of the noisy Melbourne fans.
As expected in exhibition matches the second half brought many substitutions and consequently the game opened up right away.
Marco Rojas showed why his New Zealand compatriots were so disappointed lo lose the 19 year old across the Tasman as he wreaked havoc on the right wing, the Scottish Premier League defenders unable to contain his clever mazy runs. He set Allsopp up for what looked like the games opener only for the former ‘Golden-Boot’ to miss the goal.
The real excitement came moments before when given acres of space out on his wing he waited for the defence to arrive so he could toy with them. Breaking free again he whipped in a delectable cross, leaving Celtic goalkeeper Lukasz Zaluska in no mans land. Unfortunately fellow Melbourne debutante Jean Carlos Solorzano could connect on the goal-line but the youngster gave us a glimpse into the foreseeable future.
The Costa Rican strikers debut was also error-free on debut, despite at times frustrating at the delivery he received from youngsters James Jeggo, Luke O’Dea and Dado Lokvancic, an exciting trio of Durakovics ‘boys’ from the Melbourne youth team he commanded not so long ago.
Jeggo appeared along with O’Dea in last years blockbuster friendly against Boca Juniors but the 19 year old midfielders progress was hindered after breaking an ankle before the season started. Striker O’Dea enters his second season with Melbourne Victory and it looks like he’ll contend for a spot in the senior side this season as he seems to have bulked up plenty from this time last year. Lokvancic was the Youth sides go-to striker along with Northcote City excitement machine James Kalifitidis, he scored 5 goals in 16 appearances last season. His inclusion in this game obviously due to the release of Surat Sukha as Lokvancic darted around AAMI Park with the Thai internationals name on his back.
With Celtic manager Neil Lennon reportedly on the look out for a bargain Australian (or NZ) youngster, there were plenty to choose from in Rojas, Velaphi, Petar Franjic & Matt Foschini…
Tags: Jean Carlos Solorzano, Marco Rojas, Tando Velaphi, Glasgow Celtic, Scott Brown
