The Wellington Phoenix’s Aussie Cup Run Is Over But The Real Yarns Are Only Just Beginning
Alas, the Aussie Cup run has come to an end. A 2-0 loss to Macarthur means that the Wellington Phoenix exit the competition at the quarter-final stage and focus now shifts full time towards the start of the A-League in six weeks time. Disappointing news given that there was clearly a trophy on the line with two NPL clubs making it to the semis... but also can’t lose sight of the most important yarns. These weren’t preseason games but they did happen during preseason. New signings are settling in. Several of them weren’t even available yet. The journey continues unabated.
Ufuk Talay named an unchanged eleven to that which beat Melbourne City in the previous round. Sweet as, although it meant that Tim Payne and Yan Sasse were only on the bench. Also no Steven Ugarkovic or Lucas Mauragis for reasons of cup entanglement whilst David Ball (and of course Alex Rufer) remained injured. Too soon for new striker signing Oskar Zawata to be involved. Hence it was multiple steps away from a top strength team; although that did allow Riley Bidois, Noah Karunaratne, Jackson Manuel, and Marco Lorenz to make the trip.
Ben Waine hit the post inside three minutes with a header from a corner kick (that he’d won, streaming forward on the end of a Bozhidar Kraev ball). Good early signs... but it turned out to be a false offering. A stacked attacking group for Macarthur soon began to dominate a very end-to-end game. The Nix had the possession advantage but their best stuff was on the counter attack. Not a particularly comfortable watch.
Daniel Arzani was causing trouble on the left wing – the discipline of Ben Old to double back alongside Callan Elliot was the main thing keeping him in check. Nobody was slowing down Ulises Davila though, he was a class above. Al Hasan Toure was also a threat on the other side. Anthony Carter wasn’t doing as much up top but the three guys around him were more than a handful. Particularly for a Nix team that was giving the ball away far too easily at times and inviting pressure back upon themselves.
Nick Pennington made a brilliant goal-line clearance with his head after Kraev had blocked the initial shot. Toure missed a 1v1 with Sail closing him down quick enough to force the shot wide, another lucky escape. Finally the home side scored in the 41st minute as Uli Davila got around the left side of the overlap and picked out Anthony Carter in the middle, whose first touch was excellent and then his lay-off hit Toure who buried the sucker. Far from one way traffic... but all the best chances were Macarthur’s and they deserved the lead.
The second half started the same way so ten mins into it Uffie turned to his bench: Tim Payne on for Sam Sutton and Yan Sasse on for Ben Old. Not sure about Payne on the left but the Sasse change clearly helped proceedings. His directness gave the Nix a foothold in attack and chances did follow. A couple-shots by Sasse. Waine and Barbarouses combined a few times. Kraev was always looking to link up – seems a happily unselfish player, that bloke, which is convenient.
This was our first proper glimpse of Yan Sasse in yellow and black and the main impression was how much he drifted from his right wing position. Always looking to get involved, seeking an overload. He also wasn’t about to let any possibility of a shot escape his left foot. That... might turn out to be a welcome tendency or it might not. Jury’s still out. Though guys like Ball, Kraev, and Barbarouses tend to be facilitators first so it seems like a good thing to have the variety of a more direct option too.
In an A-League game with VAR in tow, the Kearyn Baccus sprigs challenge on Clayton Lewis with about ten to play could easily have been a red card. Instead it was a cheeky yellow. Note that a few of the Nix fellas were right in there in retaliation, Ben Waine amongst them. Waine-o had earlier taken exception to a hard challenge on himself which led to him getting booked. Don’t really wanna see needless yellow cards but in the case of Ben Waine it’s kinda cool that he’s seriously asserting himself out there. He’s not a fresh academy graduate any longer. He’s played 65 ALM games. It’s time to dominate this show. If you stand in the way of the Waine Train then you’re going to get hurt.
But yeah then Tim Payne bollocksed a back pass in the 88th minute and Lachlan Rose scored the gift for 2-0. Looked like Payne got his angles a bit mixed playing on the left instead of the right. Josh Laws still might have gotten there had he anticipated it but Laws was expecting a pass back to Oli Sail and in fairness to Josh Laws that’s exactly where it should have gone.
Thus there’ll be no Aussie Cup trophy for the Welly Nix lads this season. Oh well. It was pretty clear that the main problem the Phoenix had in this match was that it arrived in the middle of preseason. Combinations simply aren’t there yet. Defensively it was alright but up front guys like Barbarouses, Kraev, and Sasse are all new to the club and lacking in familiarity. That and a subpar midfield performance in the first half – had Ugarkovic been available then maybe it’d have been a different story.
Ugarkovic will be available for week one of the ALM season. Hopefully David Ball will be back as well. Everybody will be fitter and stronger. Combinations will have grown, tactics will be more embedded. All them good things, no reason for any optimism to sizzle out based on this one defeat. There’s been a lot of turnover in the attacking areas over the offseason so we can’t be too shocked that they lost a game being unable to stump up a desperate equaliser. When it matters, they’ll be much more ready.
The extent of all that attacking turnover is now understood because this Aussie Cup match came the day after the Wellington Phoenix completed their squad for 2022-23. They’d been talking about adding a tall target man striker and lo and behold they’ve added a tall target man striker: Oskar Zawada, a 26 year old Polish forward.
Zawada hasn’t been capped at senior level but he played for his country in pretty much all the youth grades. Started off at Wolfsburg in Germany where he used to score in bundles for the U17 and U19 teams but never played for the top team. The majority of his senior footy has come in the Polish league though he did go on loan to FC Twente as a youngster and more recently made 10 goalless appearances for Jeju United in South Korea.
To be honest, the stats are pretty average. Despite the massive potential he showed in Germany he’s never been a prolific scorer at senior level, his best tally in a league season is the six he got in 23 games for Wisla Plock in 2019-20. But you do have to cut him some slack considering that was also the most games he’s played in a league season. Doesn’t appear that he’s ever properly settled at one club. The Nix will be his seventh permanent home to go with a couple other loan stints.
Worst case scenario is that Uffie’s signed a donkey. Best case scenario is he’s signed a diamond in the rough who’s been waiting his whole career for a situation just like this one in which to thrive. Zawada himself said upon signing that he feels he’s only just coming into his peak years as a player and he’s got a fair point considering that he’s the same age now as Chris Wood was when he had his breakout season for Leeds.
Zawada is 1.92 metres tall. Only Oli Sail can look down upon him within this squad - this is a man who can definitely reach the top shelf. Exactly what the club were looking for in their new number nine... to the extent that the write-up on the club website mentions his height before they even mention his name. However you only have to peek at some of his highlights to see that he’s got way more to his game than just being a tall bastard. Yes, he gets up and wins headers. Scores a few of them too by the looks. But he’s also quite mobile, much quicker than you’d expect, and that will suit him well within Talay’s system. It’s imperative that the front four can press and that ain’t gonna be a problem for Oskar Zawada.
Always gotta give the benefit of the doubt to any new signing, especially when you haven’t seen them play before. What’s interesting here is that the claim that the squad is now complete. So no additional local defender on the cards for depth. This squad does have a lot of versatile players and it’s easier to keep everybody happy with a smaller squad. As it stands, the Nix have used all five visa spots and have a senior squad of 21... though four other academy players featured in the Aussie Cup. Same as last season, it seems Uffie is happy to fill out the odds and ends with youth teamers.
Of those 21 contracted players, six are new signings while the remaining fifteen were with the club last season. Nine of those fifteen were also here the season before that. And six of those nine have been with the team for the entire three years that Ufuk Talay’s been the coach (plus Callan Elliot who was there in year one, left, then came back for year three). Alex Rufer, Oli Sail, Ben Waine, and Callan Elliot are the four players who predate Uffie (same caveat for Elliot again)... albeit Rufer was the only regular starter back then.
2022-23 Additions: Steven Ugarkovic, Kosta Barbarouses, Lucas Mauragis (loan), Bozhidar Kraev, Yan Sasse, Oskar Zawada
2022-23 Departures: Louis Fenton, Jaushua Sotirio, James McGarry, Reno Piscopo, Gael Sandoval, Gary Hooper, Matthew Bozinovski (plus scholarship players Kurtis Mogg & George Ott as well as mid-season release Luka Prso)
There’s an undeniable focus on the attack with those signings. Mostly to replace dudes who’ve left but with four out of five imports occupying the front four, not to mention the 50+ cap All Whites striker they added and a couple rapidly developing youth team grads, they’re never going to be short of attacking options on the bench (as was regularly the case last term).
The Welly Nix blokes only scored 34 goals in 26 games last season. As much as fellas like Sotirio and Piscopo had many upsides they weren’t especially prolific with the ol’ end product. Sotirio did just have his best season... but let’s not kid ourselves that Kosta isn’t a big upgrade. Meanwhile Gael Sandoval: a) wasn’t as good as Ulises Davila before him, and b) had to play in the midfield quite a few times because of other injuries. Steven Ugarkovic is not only a class player but that extra midfield depth means we won’t end up with Bozhidar Kraev at CM at any point.
As for Gary Hooper... excellent player but the best ability is availability and he was always injured. In his two seasons with the Nix he was 13th and 19th for total minutes played within the squad. 34 games, 19 starts, and only 9 times did he last ninety minutes. Out of a total of 54 possible matches.
Also let’s not overlook that ridiculous stat about the Welly Nix losing every time they conceded first and winning or drawing whenever they scored first. That wasn’t a coincidence. They didn’t have a lot of tactical variety in attack so when deep lines prevented Sotirio from making runs and stretching the pitch there wasn’t much else to fall back on.
That’s why Uffie is stacking the shelves with a proper conglomeration of forwards. All shapes and sizes from all over the globe. They’ll take some time to gel but when they do he’s always gonna have an option up his sleeve with twenty minutes to go and his team down a goal (as was the case in that Aussie Cup loss – the Yan Sasse sub didn’t save their cup run but it definitely impacted the momentum of the match).
Of course the risk is that it means ignoring a defence that was also pretty average last season. The fact that they conceded the most goals in the entire comp might be misleading but it’s still not encouraging when they haven’t actually brought in anyone at all to improve that. Mauragis is a straight swap for James McGarry as backup left back and that’s it.
Talay’s hope will be that the defence comes right as other things come right (and that any remaining deficiencies will be overcome by their amazing boost in goals scored). In fairness, 27 of the 49 goals that they allowed came in just six games. Four 4-0 losses, a 5-0 loss, and a 6-0 loss. Most of them occurring at times when the team was short on players during an injury crisis that plagued the midfield and defence most of all. Ugarkovic and Lewis in the midfield is a lot better than Pennington and Sandoval.
Also, whist they could still sign another local defender at any moment... one silver lining to that injury crisis was the emergence of Finn Surman. The teenaged CB made a few mistakes out there, as anyone would, but a run of starts down the stretch – including in the elimination final – has put his development into overdrive. With Josh Laws back fit and Tim Payne always an option alongside Scott Wootton, Finn Surman won’t be a first choice CB (he was an unused sub in all three cup games)... but the lack of any other signings in that spot is a large show of faith in Surman’s ability.
Unfortunately we’ve gotta wait until October 9 to see this team next – that’s when they host Adelaide United in week one of the new ALM season. In Wellington, no less! Until then we’ve just gotta sit back and trust that things are percolating as they should. The squad is complete. We’ve had a tasty cup run to whet the appetite. All the ducks are in order.
And now we wait...
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