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Don’t be fooled, United actually won

By now you might have seen all kinds of nonsense published on Australian news and soccer websites about last night’s match between Perth Glory and Adelaide United.

Oct 26, 2015, updated May 02, 2016
Adelaide United racks up another possession via Mate Dugandzic. AAP image

Adelaide United racks up another possession via Mate Dugandzic. AAP image

It threatens to become a giant myth – that Perth won the game.

But it simply isn’t true.

Those who are responsible for this lie (yes, let’s not mince words) are ignoring the facts, probably because they can’t accept them.

So I’ll provide them for you.

Adelaide United held possession for 69% of the match.

The Reds also made 611 passes to Perth’s 279.

And their passing accuracy was 86%. Despite being at home, Glory could do no better than 67% on that measure.

Haven’t you heard? You don’t lose matches when you hold more of the ball, make more passes and are more accurate.

Listen to experts and they’ll tell you this (and, by the way, you’ll never be an expert if you can’t say “Barcelona” more often than Rain Man mentioned K-mart).

I utterly reject any claim that the final score was Perth Glory 3 Adelaide United 1 – as has been reported – and so should you.

It’s coming from those people who can’t understand, or don’t accept, that possession is paramount. When talking about how teams should approach matches, they use words like “flexible”, “pragmatic” and ”unpredictable”. Again, let’s not beat around the bush; they’re cavemen.

They refuse to respect possession and passing statistics. And they talk about goals like they’re the only things that really count. Ridiculous.

I knew United would win last night because the Reds play the game properly and Perth Glory doesn’t.

And to be fair to the poor Western Australian team, its coach is English.

Passports are important in soccer and when you put an Englishman up against a chap who played for Spain, it can only go one way.

“Spain good, England bad.” If you want to make sure you sound like you know what you’re talking about, remember those words. It may seem simplistic but here’s another fact: whoever the worst coach in Spain is, he’s still going to be 100 times better than the best one in England.

Sure, it’s possible to be a bad coach and not be English. Australian-born Graham Arnold is a good example.

Have you seen how his teams play? It’s the antithesis of the beautiful game.

Not surprisingly, there are myths about Arnie too. The uneducated claim he won silverware at the helm of Central Coast Mariners and that his current club, Sydney FC, beat Western Sydney on Saturday night.

But let’s get back to Adelaide United and what the team has proved.

Playing the game as it should be played, by holding possession with short accurate passes, can’t fail.

Opponents will never be able to work out how to deal with it, no matter how used to it they are.

Moreover, it means not having to worry too much about the quality of your players and their attributes. If you just keep finding a teammate with a short pass everything else will take care of itself.

Wouldn’t you hate to be the opposition? So starved of possession that even on those rare occasions they do get their feet on the ball they don’t know what to do with it.

That’s what happened to the Perth Glory players yesterday. All they could do was try to get out of defence quickly and directly. I suppose they buy into that nonsensical idea of having “speed in transition”.

They were always doomed because of their inability to put a series of short passes together.

United’s triumph should give the team renewed momentum for the rest of the season. Next up is a trip to Brisbane which could be a little tricky because the Roar’s coach used to play in Spain and he has a midfielder whose CV includes a stint with Real Madrid’s Bs (which is still better than turning out for anyone else’s first team, except Barcelona’s of course).

But you might as well put Adelaide United’s name on the trophy now. The only team near the Reds at the top of the table is that other club with an armada of Spaniards: Western Sydney.

The Wanderers are also set to give opponents no option but to raise the white flag of surrender this season. Because no form of torture is more psychologically destructive than being made to face hundreds of short accurate passes.

Remember this the next time you’re kicking a ball in a park with your mates. I know it’s tempting to stick a couple of jumpers at each end and use them for goals.

But you should count passes instead. If you’re not ahead on that measure, you can’t really win.

Paul Marcuccitti is InDaily’s soccer columnist. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 11am on Saturdays. Manton St Tales will be published every Monday during the A-League season.

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