Class of 2019 out to prove they are the best Sydney FC team in the club’s history
Sydney FC are flying at the top of the A-League table, and are mounting a strong claim to be the best side in the club’s history.
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More points, more goals, more wins. It’s no wonder Sydney FC are on the verge of more records.
Football fans in Sydney whose colours are red and black might want to look away now, for there is no avoiding the dominance of the players in Sky Blue.
Already five points clear at the summit less than a third of the way through the season, defeat of the bottom-placed Mariners on Saturday would knock over a few more dominoes for the defending champions.
With seven wins and 21 points in eight games so far, the 2019-20 vintage have already equalled the best ever start to an A-League season at this stage. In 2006-07, Melbourne Victory had the same record, also winning seven of their first eight matches.
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To pull ahead of that Victory side, Sydney would need to win their next three games, but internally this squad is already ahead of the pack.
No Sydney team had won seven of its first eight games before this year, not even the record-breaking side of 2016-17 that went on to set a high-water mark by accruing 66 points.
Including their last three games on domestic soil last season, Sydney has won seven consecutive home games, equalling their 2016/17 club record. A win tonight would break that as well.
All of which raises an interesting question – whether the team assembled by Corica is better than its 2016-17 predecessor, the Graham Arnold-led team which lost only one game and fairly sauntered to the double.
More than half the strongest starting XI has changed, including the goalkeeper, centreback, a central midfielder and three of the front four.
“It's nice to be compared to that great squad but there's a long way to go and a lot of hard work before we get to that,” said coach Steve Corica, and it’s true that comparisons at this stage could be misleading. Corica’s side has to maintain the pace over a whole campaign.
But the stats are persuasive so far, collectively and individually. No sooner had The Daily Telegraph published a table of the most effective goalscorers in the A-League last weekend, with Bobo at the summit, than Adam Le Fondre produced a hat-trick to surge past his predecessor at the point of the Sydney attack.
This team doesn’t have Bobo’s power in the air, but with three of the front four 178cm or less they play a different brand of football.
“They enjoying it,” said Corica. “When you enjoy your football is when you play at your best. We still have improvement to go but the boys like playing together and working together.”
They have to stay fit, they have to stay in form, but so far no one has offered a convincing way of combating the champions.
Instead their toughest opponent may prove to be themselves, or a former version of themselves, in the battle to be the finest team in Sydney’s history.
Originally published as Class of 2019 out to prove they are the best Sydney FC team in the club’s history