Melbourne Victory head coach Marco Kurz rued his side’s poor start after a 3-1 loss to Adelaide United in the Hyundai A-League.
Victory fell behind to a Riley McGree goal before Ola Toivonen equalised in the second half at Coopers Stadium.
However, a Migjen Basha own goal and another McGree strike saw the Reds grab three points.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Kurz was unhappy with Victory’s start, while he discussed Robbie Kruse’s impact after the attacker assisted Toivonen’s goal.
on the game…
“I think the best thing in the first half was the result, that we only conceded one goal. In the second half we had the luck to come back with the equaliser and then we defended very poorly for the second goal – kick the ball out and the situation is done. I think to concede after the equaliser the second goal was too early and it was then hard to come back. We had some moments, some chances, but at the end I think we have to speak about the first half because if you start in this way games, you’ll never win one in the future. We have enough experienced players. Also, I think we know we have problems with some injured players or some players that came back after their national trip, but at the end you can fight, you can run, want to win the duel and that was not enough in the first half and we lost the game in the first half.”
on Kruse…
“It’s time that he comes back because now we have Round 7, Round 7 is played but he was not fit enough to let him start. His last 90 minutes were I think five months ago. He’s a high-quality player. It was good to give him minutes, that was maybe a good thing in the game, also that Andrew (Nabbout) played the full game was not too bad, but we are really disappointed about our game.”
on the start…
“I saw no pressure. I saw long balls, second balls and they were better. They were sharper, they were running more, they wanted to win the duels. They played long ball, a couple of players come under the ball and if you don’t win the second balls, don’t win the duel then you cannot win a game and that’s basics in football and we missed the basics in the first half. And nothing to do with pressure, it’s only the basics before we start to speak about tactics, about this kind of stuff, we must restart with the basics in football.”
