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Adelaide and the quest for something new

There have always been incredible strikers at every club in the A-League. Center-forwards trusting the tops of the ranking of top scorers. A key element that Adelaide United finally seem to have found.

Scorer of six goals in the last six outings, Tomi Jurić is the man in form for theAdelaide, thus pointing to seventh place in the league scorers standings. If he is still far from the total achieved by Sergio van Dijk, top scorer in the championship ten years ago (sixteen goals), the scorer of ‘Roos could finally put an end to a decade spent by the club to find the rare bird.

The record of the state club South Australia has nothing to envy to many: from the first season of A-League, in 2005/06, the Reds winning the regular season and playing two of the first four finals. Since then, the wardrobe has been stocked: a double Premiership Championship won ten years later under the orders of Guillermo Amor (read: the Barcelona revolution of Adelaide) and three FFA Cup, a record. The year of the double, the attacker was named Bruce Djite. Now director of football at the club, he had however only sent nine balls into the net and since then, only Sergio van Dijk has done better. Worse, we no longer saw an attacker from Reds in the top 5 of the same ranking of top scorers. And so far, the club had used other weapons.

Glory to the team!

Offensively, Adelaide United has never been a bad student even if the 2016 title was not acquired thanks to a fire attack (forty-five goals in the regular phase, fourth attack far behind the sixty-three goals of Melbourne City). To compensate for the lack of real nine, the red and blue have always relied on the other players surrounding the striker, like Pablo Sánchez (nine goals) or Marcelo Carrusca (five goals) during the double in 2016 Norwegian striker Kristian Opseth only found the net six times last season. No problem, Riley McGree, placed behind him, stuck ten goals, Ben Halloran, left side, put nine. If in the national cup, this lack did not have much impact (three titles therefore in 2014, 2018 and 2019 and a final lost in 2017), at the time of entering play-offs, the absence of factor X in attack poses many problems.

The Australian championship has taught us that a clinical striker in front of opposing goals is necessary. The Sydney FC got off to a complicated start at the start of the season without Adam Le Fondre – transferred to India in Mumbaï City FC after a 2019/20 season with twenty goals – and without an experienced top striker. He came back led by Brazilian striker Bobô, six goals in thirteen games, and brought back his striker from last year just before the final sprint. And this season, Adelaide United, contender for the title, can certainly rely on the talent of Stefan Mauk his mid-scorer, the club could have found its solution in Tomi Jurić.

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Jurić and the training center

Dispatched from CSKA Sofia and returning from an injury-disrupted European career, Tomi Jurić was at one time the hope of an entire nation. This X factor so much sought after as it was in the 2014 Champions League final won by the Western Sydney Wanderers. The Sydney club, two years after its creation, then became the only club to emerge from A-League to win the continental title. In the 2015 Asian Cup final with theAustralia, it is he who tears off in order to recover the ball in the feet of Kim Jin-su and to see his center, pushed back by Kim Jin-Hyeon, taken over by James Troisi who offers the title to the Socceroos.

It is to find this that Carl Veart placed his beliefs in him before starting the new season by offering him the position of number one striker in the Reds, raising many questions as Jurić has never scored more than ten goals in a season in A-League and that his physical condition was not perfect, Carl Veart having even specified that “Tomi must train separately, he cannot yet endure training with the team”. To better wait for the takeoff of his rocket, Veart first relied on the club’s training center: Al Hassan Touré and Kusini Yengi, two hopes at their post. Twenty-year-old Touré is a diamond that the club almost sold over the summer when Yengi (twenty-two) broke this season, notably with a powerful goal against the Melbourne Victory. The wait has paid off. After a hat-trick on the penalty spot against Mariners, then leaders, Tomi Jurić thus chained, against his former club, the Wanderers, at Macarthur, then to Sydney FC, offering a draw to its Reds after a double from Bobô side Sky Blues. Now in the league’s top 5 scorers, Jurić now carries the hopes ofAdelaide who think they have finally found the X factor that will be decisive.

Author

Antoine Blanchet-Quérin

Author: Antoine Blanchet-Quérin

Australian football reporter (Socceroos, A-League, FFA Cup, NPL) in France for Lucarne Opposée.

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