Melbourne Victory started its Foxtel Y-League campaign with a 7-0 loss to Brisbane Roar on Saturday.
Summary
Mirza Muratovic scored a hat-trick for Brisbane in hot conditions at Eric Evans Oval, where Victory defender Matthew Bozinovski was sent off late.
Cai Tipaldo, Aaron Reardon, Eli Adams and Keegan Jelacic were also on the scoresheet for the defending champion.
Victory made a decent start before Brisbane struck three times prior to half-time.
Tipaldo headed in a cross for the opener before Muratovic converted from the penalty spot.
The host made it 3-0 four minutes prior to the break, Reardon heading in a cross.
Victory went close to begin the second half as striker Ryan Lethlean hit the post.
However, Brisbane extended its lead through Adams, who scored a fine solo goal to make it 4-0 before Muratovic completed his brace.
Muratovic scored his third and Bozinovski was sent off before Jelacic added a late free-kick for Brisbane.
Head coach Gareth Naven’s post-match thoughts
“I want our players to do more of what they did in the first 32 minutes, and the last 58 minutes I want them to do less of, it’s as simple as that. Our first 32 minutes were good, good control defensively, good attacking moments, the performance is what’s needed. The other 58 minutes I’d like to think we can learn from it and get better from it and it tells us where we are. Considering that, we had four or five ’02s (players born in 2002) that four months ago were playing under-20s against Moreland Zebras and they’ll learn from it as well. We’ve got some existing experienced players in that group that will look back on that game and say, ‘I need to do more in regards to my contribution’, but overall I would say 32 minutes of what we did well, we need to do it more often.”
Result
Foxtel Y-League 2019/20 Round 1
Brisbane Roar 7 (Cai Tipaldo 32′, Mirza Muratovic 36′ pen/80’/84′, Aaron Reardon 41′, Eli Adams 70′, Keegan Jelacic 90+1′)
Melbourne Victory 0
Melbourne Victory: Matthew Sutton (gk) (c), Andrew Visciglio, Matthew Bozinovski, Dalibor Markovic, So Nishikawa (Zayden Bello 42′), William Wilson, Jack Morton, Yazid Said (Ryan Lethlean 59′), Joshua Varga, James Paneras (Robson Deme 45′), Jack Palazzolo.
