Adelaide United Head Coach, Marco Kurz, bemoaned his side’s costly errors, but admitted he could not fault the endeavour shown in their 2-1 loss to Brisbane Roar on Saturday.
George Blackwood’s 69th minute finish was unable to spark a comeback after Fahid Ben Khalfallah and Massimo Maccarone opened the scoring in the first-half, profiting from two avoidable mishaps.
The Roar were also reduced to 10 men with the assistance of VAR when Matt McKay kicked out at Nikola Mileusnic deep in added time of the first 45.
Kurz gave his assessment of the clash at Coopers Stadium, admitting his side largely played well but lamented the manner in which they conceded both goals.
“We are not happy with the result but we must respect it,” he said in the post-match press conference.
“I think today it’s the first time we played against a very defensive team.
“And we did well in the first ten minutes and when you play against these defensive teams you must play firm passes and switch the side a lot of times to move (Brisbane) and find spaces.
“And also it’s very important you make no mistakes because they wait for one or two situations and I think the result was that we made two big mistakes in the build-up.
“And they’ve the experience and quality to score two goals.”
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Kurz made a double substitution soon after the re-start with the aim of salvaging something from the game.
Michael Marrone made his 100th Hyundai A-League appearance for Adelaide, replacing Nathan Konstandopoulos and pushing Ryan Strain into midfield. Meanwhile, Johan Absalonsen played his first match since October at the expense of Ben Garuccio and moved Ryan Kitto into left-back.
The German boss explained the reasoning behind some of his alterations in the second stanza.
“In the second-half we changed a lot of things to bring more offensive power,” he said.
“And play more from the sides and I think we have enough chances to score more goals but you need a little bit of luck.
“Yeah we are frustrated but I saw it as a process in our season.”
With the Reds virtually at the midpoint of the season, Kurz said he hoped his team would continue improving and achieve their primary objective – to qualify for a top six berth.
“I hope we can make the next step and you see that every game is very hard to play,” he said.
“… I hope we come to the same moment in the second-half of the season and the goal is to make the finals and we must do a good job and work hard.”
Adelaide United will face Perth Glory in Round 14 of the Hyundai A-League 2017/18 season on Friday, 5 January at nib Stadium. Kick-off is at 9.30pm ACDT.
