Sydney FC prepare to face Melbourne Victory in a Big Blue at Kogarah that could define season

Only four rounds in, it feels like we might have reached a pivotal point. The 47th Big Blue will provide a stirring postscript to the weekend, a near-sell out crowd greeting Sydney FC’s first foray of their homeless period to Kogarah.

Sydney FC striker Adam Le Fondre has hit the ground running. Picture: AAP

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Only four rounds in, it feels like we might have reached a pivotal point. The 47th Big Blue will provide a stirring postscript to the weekend, a near-sell out crowd greeting Sydney FC’s first foray of their homeless period to Kogarah.

At a viewer-friendly time, there should be many thousands also watching on TV, for a fixture that has pulsated like almost no other in the history of the A-League. Wherever Sydney and Melbourne Victory are on the table, it tends to hum.

But this feels like a particularly potent encounter, precisely because of where the two teams are on the table, just off the top and sitting in the slip stream of Perth.

The early-season form of the two teams in shades of blue has been rather different. After a sluggish opening Victory seem to gathering steam, especially if they can unveil World Cup signing Ola Toivonen from the start.

Sydney FC striker Adam Le Fondre (right) celebrates scoring against Melbourne City with teammate Milos Ninkovic. Picture: AAP

Sydney by contrast have been a study in efficiency, conceding the fewest goals and quietly scoring only less than Perth and Victory.

And this is why it feels like a statement could be made at Jubilee Oval, even so early in the campaign. Both sides have made light of missing key men – Toivenon’s contribution amounting to 10 minutes so far, and Siem de Jong out for Sydney now apparently until after Christmas – but a win in the Big Blue will vindicate one team’s methods.

You could argue that both sides have something to prove in light of their turnovers – not of the ball, but of players. In the 18 months since the 2017 grand final between them, Sydney and Melbourne have changed 15 of the 26 players who featured that day. So many of the key men have gone, from Berisha and Rojas to Bobo and Vukovic.

Melbourne Victory’s Swedish striker Ola Toivonen. Picture: AAP

The key is which team controls the tempo and the temperature of a contest that often threatens to boil over. Sydney are at their best when their only focus is their own gameplan, and are able to disdain Victory’s attempts to turn the sport from chess to arm wrestling.

The cooler Sydney’s heads stay, the greater their chances of winning. Their structure, especially without the ball, can nullify the way Victory want to play, and in Milos Ninkovic and Adam Le Fondre they have clinicians with the cold-eyed ability to engineer and take a chance in the blink of an eye.

Kevin Muscat’s teams, by contrast, thrive on the emotion of the occasion; they have more pace, and need the contest to open up to exploit that. Last season in the semi-final they drew Sydney into a slugfest, and came out on top, compared with numerous occasions previously where they had themselves been picked off.

Sydney FC coach Steve Corica will be aiming to outsmart his Melbourne Victory counterpart Kevin Muscat. Picture: Getty Images

Tactically Victory’s methods will be relatively straightforward without the ball, focusing on keeping Ninkovic away from possession. With de Jong absent, the suspicion is that if you stop Ninkovic, you have gone a long way towards stopping Sydney.

There will still be 22 rounds left after this, of course, but still this feels like a Big Blue to set the agenda.

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Originally published as Sydney FC prepare to face Melbourne Victory in a Big Blue at Kogarah that could define season