Round 19 saw Adelaide United up against Central Coast Mariners at Coopers Stadium for Friday night football, with the crowd well under 10,000, maybe Valentine’s Day celebrations kept people away?
The match was predominantly a boring affair for all but 2minutes of madness, when the match would turn and the mariners had the wind taken from under their wings. The Reds continue to struggle with injured players, Troisi was out and with Nathan Konstandopoulos suffering an ACL rupture in training, Verbeek was drawing deep into his bench to field a decent squad.
It takes injuries of regular players to enable juniors to step up and it’s good to see Verbeek trusting his younger stars M. Toure and D’Arrigo and giving them chances to shine!
Back to the match with both teams quite capable of beating the best on their day and on the flip side, being woeful on off days, it was a rather timid affair. Central Coast came out hard in the first 35mins and dominated the play predominantly through Kim and McGlinchey in the midfield. The first half would end nil all, but Adelaide was starting to show promise, as the trio of Melusnic, McGree and Maria started to dominate passes and the running game.
The second half was predominantly a lack lust affair until the 77th minute when young 15 yr old Mohammed Toure came on for a tiring Melusnic, this move instiantly sparked up the crowd and the Reds. In the 82 minute McGree would set up Blackwood, who thumped a cracking goal over the keeper into the top right corner to give the Reds the lead.
Two minuted later McGree on a blistering run on the left flank would spot out the young Toure in the box, who netted and easy first A League goal of his career and officially take the record of youngest A League scorer, by 3 years from Kristian Popvic. A new adelaide star is rising!
The match ended a 2-nil win for Adelaide, all it took was 2 minutes and the better side would come away losers. For the reds Toure scoring was an emphatic success, is he going to school Monday, not likely, is he a Red star of the future, he has the skills and ability, hopefully he and his brother can stick around long enough, before bigger paydays come calling, hopefully not too soon for Adelaide newest footballing brothers!
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