Adelaide United coach Airton Andrioli has hailed the mental toughness of his resilient Reds outfit following their stirring 4-1 A-League Men's win over defending champions Melbourne City.
United had raced to a 2-0 lead on Friday thanks to goals from two of their youthful stars, 21-year-old Ethan Alagich on 12 minutes and 20-year-old Luka Jovanovic just three minutes later.
But City were thrown a lifeline when Dylan Pierias was controversially shown a straight red card on 36 minutes for a tangle with Andreas Kuen and pulled one back from the resultant free kick from Takeshi Kanamori, a goal of the season contender.
But despite the numerical advantage, the visitors still couldn’t find a way back with 20-year-old Ryan White and Jay Barnett finding the net for the short-handed Reds in the 79th and 84th minutes.
It left Andrioli applauding United’s ability to remain composed and focused on the task at hand when under siege from City attacks in the second half.
“The way the game started, you’re thinking 2-0, we’re getting close to scoring the third, this is going to go well,” Andrioli said.
“Then all of a sudden you get a red card, and they score straight away after that which was extremely difficult mentally for the players.
"But the resilience and character the boys showed is something that’s going to go a long way for us this season.”
Andrioli played down the controversy surrounding the sending off of Pierias, acknowledging that his feeling may have been different had the Reds not secured a stunning victory.
“I’ll make just one comment about that,” he said.
“Shaun Evans is a fantastic referee. All I can say is that maybe he was jet-lagged, he had a long trip away, came back and if you were to ask him an honest question, maybe he didn’t have one of his best games tonight.
“It could have been worse if the game had gone a different way but the way we played, especially in the second half, with the belief and the resilience and the ability to defend the result, it was fantastic.”
City coach Aurelio Vidmar, who also didn't think it was red card, urged his side to quickly reconcile the heavy defeat and shift their focus to their Asian Champions League Elite clash against Malaysia’s Johor Darul Ta’zim in Melbourne on Tuesday.
“To concede two goals against 10 men is embarrassing,” he reflected.
“That’s not what we’re about; our standards were very poor tonight, our behaviours were very poor, so let’s hope this is now a moment, draw a line in the sand.
"The only positive for us right now is that we have to lick our wounds and we’ve got a game on Tuesday.”
