It is 28 November 2015. Favourites Manchester City are on track atop of the Premier League and Hillary Clinton is widely regarded as a shoe-in for the US presidency. Eight rounds into the A-League, Adelaide United are bottom of the competition, with five losses, three draws and no wins.
What a difference a year makes.
From rookie head coach to an A-League premiership and championship double-winner, Barcelona great Guillermo Amor oversaw one of Australian football’s greatest ever transformations – from bottom to top, as Adelaide recorded 14 wins, 11 clean sheets and just one loss.
And yet here we are, one year on from when that run began; eight rounds into the A-League and Adelaide United are bottom of the competition, with five losses, three draws and no wins.
So what hope do the Reds have of another remarkable turnaround, and of becoming the first A-League team to ever win back-to-back premierships?
Leicester City’s heroics reminds us that in football, nothing is impossible. And yet Adelaide United, top? From here? Only their biggest believer – maybe that guy in the red wig, Steve – could buy that.
For starters, there was the cataclysmic dismantling of the playing group last off-season.
Flying the coop were Bruces Djite and Kamau, Craig Goodwin, Stefan Mauk, Jimmy Jeggo, Osama Malik and Pablo Sanchez: the scorers of 37 out of Adelaide’s 58 goals, lining up the next season in new colours.
Throw in pre- and early season injuries to Marcelo Carrusca, Sergio Cirio, Michael Marrone and Henrique, and Amor was staring at a ball of sticky tape and a crèche to fill his starting XI.
Add to that, bad luck and contentious officiating. After Jack Clisby’s horror tackle on Cirio, Brendan Santalab too avoided a red card to then score an added-time winner in round two. One game later the Reds again suffered a key on-field injury, and again suffer an added-time winner.
You can’t coach against screamers – from Wayne Brown, from Bruno Fornaroli, and from Connor Pain. Especially Pain. Imagine the Reds backroom staff running the tape on a player who before kick-off had scored three goals in 2,287 minutes of football. You know your luck’s out.
Four consecutive 2-1 losses and that’s before Andy Keogh’s contentious game-turning goal away to Perth. No wonder the usually unflappable Spaniard was given the Kenny Lowe treatment and sent for some glass-box reflection time.
And yet, these mitigating circumstances aside, as an attacking force the 2016-17 Reds are a shadow of their double-winning predecessors.
Sergio Guardiola has impressed in patches as a No9 who puts himself about, but he doesn’t batter defences with his physical presence to the degree that Djite – especially red-hot 2015-16 Djite – did. For all the reputation of Adelaide’s tiki-taka football under Josep Gombau, a feature of Amor’s Reds was a tendency to go long and directly to an aerially accomplished striker, offering knock-downs and spilled balls for wily quick forwards operating around him.
Out wide, the Reds are a Kamau or a Goodwin short, and two with ongoing injury to Cirio. As a club, the Reds have always excelled at bringing through young talent, but this terrific cohort of young potentials still need galvanising with one more aged head – a proven winger to consistently deliver a probing final product.
Carrusca’s gradual return may greatly enhance Adelaide’s midfield creativity, and with that increasing fluency between the Argentine, James Holland and Isaias who has been less influential thus far this season.
As always, with an influx of new faces it takes time for understandings to develop – the Reds may yet rediscover the Borg-like collective thinking they exhibited last season.
More tellingly though, the rest of the league has not remained static. When Adelaide were bottom this time last year, Melbourne Victory were top – and their dramatic capitulation to finish sixth was largely overshadowed by Sydney FC’s own stunning weekly meditations on mediocrity.
John van ‘t Schip’s Melbourne City flattered to deceive, despite the most prolific forward line the league had ever seen, and while Brisbane and Wanderers enjoyed success, neither appeared utterly convincing as premiership-winners-in-waiting.
Fast-forward a year, and there are teams in the A-League that look the real deal. Sydney FC may have had their flattest showing against Adelaide, but you’d put your house on this XI versus last year’s version in 99 out of 100 games.
Likewise the arrivals of Tim Cahill, Luke Brattan, Michael Jakobsen and Neil Kilkenny has given steel to City’s historical fragility, and after their spanking in the derby even Melbourne Victory look a title contender, with the return of James Troisi and the arrival of Max Beister.
Sitting just two wins from a finals spot, Adelaide United’s chances of silverware come season’s end are by no means over. And with key personnel returning to fitness there’s a sense a Reds rejuvenation is very much on the cards in coming weeks.
But for a repeat of last season’s remarkable run, Amor will need every round peg in every round hole and every slice of good fortune to come his way. And luck’s not a commodity Adelaide fans have seen too much of over the last eight weeks.
