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Everyone wants to beat Sydney [Thu Sep 15th, 2005]
Sydney FC coach Pierre Littbarski has challenged his 'glamour' team to realise they are the team everyone wants to beat, thus plan for matches accordingly.
The German World Cup winner suffered his first A-League season loss at Newcastle last weekend, conceding two quick-fire goals to the Jets in the opening stanza of the match.
The 2-1 loss has made Littbarski realise that teams are motivated to win when facing his charges; hence his team has to match the opposition's intensity in the opening period of every match, starting against the Central Coast Mariners at Aussie Stadium.
"I think the teams we are playing are very strong early in the game because they want to beat us," Littbarski said.
"We must match this in the early periods. Everyone wants to beat Sydney FC. The players need to understand this and learn to live with this and be just as motivated at the start of games.
"I think against Newcastle they wanted to win at the start and they came out very hard and had two early goals.
"After the start we came back but it was too hard to come back from two goals (behind) away from home and we lost the game," he added before welcoming some of the criticism levelled at the club after a start which has seen Sydney FC draw, win and lose from three matches.
"If a team loses a game they are criticised. I have no problem with that and it does not surprise me," he said. "It shows there are people out there who care and have passion.
"No team can expect to go through a season undefeated and you are going to have losses.
"We have to make sure we win against the Central Coast because it is very close. If we win we will move forward and if we lose we will fall back a bit."
Marquee signing and former Manchester United treble winner Dwight Yorke will return to the starting side this weekend, after coming off the bench to score his second goal of the season against Newcastle.
"I think he (Yorke) did change the team when he came on with his play, but also the motivation for the players, having him on the field," Littbarski said.
"He is a great player and he will be back of course. I felt I didn’t want to risk him getting injured for one game last weekend and I was looking at the whole season, which is why he started on the bench."
Sydney FC squad:
Clint Bolton (gk), Iain Fyfe, Alvin Ceccoli, Mark Rudan, Ufuk Talay, Robbie Middleby, Matthew Bingley, David Zdrilic, Sasho Petrovski, David Carney, Andrew Packer, Terry McFlynn, Jacob Timpano, Dwight Yorke and Justin Pasfield (gk).
AAP
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