Former Wanderer Alex Baumjohann gets fierce reception in Parramatta
Alex Baumjohann should’ve known what was coming. After backing up his defection to Sydney FC with some choice criticisms, Western Sydney fans gave the German a howling welcome back.
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Western Sydney fans clearly don’t care much for parting shots — especially from the defected.
For if Alex Baumjohann’s Sydney FC switch wasn’t enough on its own to merit such vitriol from the A-League’s most impassioned supporters, then his biting recent remarks about the Wanderers’ perceived lack of ambition got the collective loathing levels over the line.
The first boos boomed out six minutes into Bankwest Stadium’s Sydney derby christening, as the German playmaker strode to the corner flag to take a set-piece.
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Taunts echoed again in the 10th, as the Red and Black Bloc only too happily interrupted their “Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, f*** east Sydney” chants to redirect their antagonism towards the player who’d scorned them so.
The provocations did little to torment the thick-skinned German, who earlier this month told The Daily Telegraph the Wanderers “gave up” too early on last season.
Babbel, with whom Baumjohann endured a fraught relationship, retaliated this week that one of his first recruits “could have done more”.
On this occasion the 32-year-old once scouted by Bayern Munich was upstaged by an enchanting Milos Ninkovic, though not through lack of effort.
And, right on cue, in the 11th. And so on and so forth until the jeers followed him off the pitch in the 72nd.
Poor Matt Jurman, the other derby defector, would have felt horribly left out.
The only time he was cheered was when he fired a speculative shot well wide and straight into the Wanderers’ active support bays, and when he got grassed twice by a fired-up Pirmin Schwegler.
Schwegler, in his first derby, appeared to be on a one-man mission to make every Sky Blues opponent explode.
The Swiss midfielder was the feistiest fiend on the field, and finally shown a yellow card for his efforts 10 minutes after halftime when his tit-for-tat with Rhyan Grant (also yellow-carded) boiled over into an all-out sideline melee embroiling even Sydney coach Steve Corica.
That really was the order of the night at a ground that erupted time and again with more venom than a Wanderers home derby produced in all three years at Olympic Park combined.
The other key difference was that the Wanderers got the last laugh at their new Parramatta fortress.
Granted, their first-half goal had nine lives, outlasting a hatful of Sydney chances, a handball penalty appeal and a goal-line call so close only goal-line technology could have accurately decided.
And so, for the first time since the old Pirtek Stadium stood on this patch of land, the Wanderers will finish an A-League round top of the table.