Love's Labour Wins In Adelaide

The Western Sydney Wanderers have been humbled in their inaugural FFA Cup match against Adelaide City tonight.

Adelaide City's Thomas Love scored late in the second half to secure a history 1-0 win for the hosts.

The FFA Cup, being played for the first time this season, saw the Wanderers travel to South Australia as part of the final series of matches in the Round of 32. With numerous players subject to injury clouds or a lack of match practice having recent made their way to Australia, the Wanderers lined up with Covic, Mullen, Topor-Stanley, La Rocca, Golec, Poljak, Trifiro, Perkatis, Appiah, Sotirio & All Star striker Tomi Juric.

Calm conditions greeted the two teams at Marden Sports Complex, and with no television broadcast or internet video streaming, supporters were forced to go back to the future and tune into to a local Adelaide radio station. The first shot in anger of the match came in the 10th minute from Mateo Poljak, who lined up his strike after some good lead-up play by Mullen, only for Poljak to fire high. Sotirio followed up with his own wide effort moments later. The best chance of the half came with the Wanderers having a header from La Rocca hacked off in the 20th minute.

After the RadioItalian website crashed under load, leaving supporters scrambling for alternate streams, it was Adelaide City who had the ball in the back of the net. Nicholas Bucco knocked a header home only to see the linesman hoist his offside flag high. Following shortly after Costa drew the first yellow card of the contest from Daniel Mullen on the half-hour, and Topor-Stanley picked up the second of the night shortly before half-time, which followed with no real threats coming from either side.

The Wanderers began the second half in dominating fashion, with the bulk of possession in the first 10 minutes. Despite the domination, the Wanderers couldn't open the scoring and Tony Popovic went for the bench to replace Jason Trifiro with Mark Bridge. Tomi Juric had a strike on goal with his right foot, skying the ball well over.

Costa put the ball in the back of the net for the second time, being put through one on one, only for the lineman to deny the striker for being offside. Juric, Kubi & Golec all had a try, and the Wanderers had a big handball shout denied by referee Alan Miliner. As Juric departed on 75 minutes it was Adelaide City who scored against the run of play through Thomas Love. He broke past 4 Wanderers defenders before slotting it home.

With three minutes of injury time put up by the fourth official the Wanderers pushed for an equaliser, but like the rest of the match, their technique & poised completely failed them and they made little of the additional time. The Wanderers become the first club in the FFA Cup to lose to State League opposition, and now have to recover for the Asian Champions League next week.

There was a flurry of drama after the game with Adelaide City late substitute Marco Mittiga coming on despite not having been named as one of the players in either the starting 11 or the 5 man substitutes bench on the Adelaide City team sheet. After a brief period of concern, it was revealed that he was a late change to the lineup and both the Wanderers & officials were informed.

The Wanderers next match is the 1st leg of the Asian Champions League quarter final against Guangzhou Evergrande at Parramatta Stadium on Wednesday the 20th of August.