As the euphoria of last Tuesday’s match washed away, Bentleigh Greens coach John Anastasiadis is now scratching his head as to how he will prepare his team for the next Cup match while the Victorian league is in off-season.
Bentleigh Green’s emphatic 2-1 win over fellow Greek sponsored club Sydney Olympic catapulted them into the top eight of the FFA Cup, but with the NPLV season over, Bentleigh is in a tough position.
Anastasiadis says he’s working on getting some friendly matches teed up, but nothing is concrete yet.
“We’re obviously going to keep training from next week, and then after that we’ll probably organise a game later on in the week, so the next two, three weeks we’ll have two or three games, so that will keep us in good stead,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
“We’ll be looking at some opposing teams, we’ll see who’s available.”
South Melbourne might be one of the best opponents for them, and they might be able to come to the rescue if they make it past their NPL finals series first match and want some more game practice.
What’s a little daunting to Anastasiadis is the prospect of getting through to the semi-finals of the cup, where most of his players will be expecting to enjoy their holidays.
“They’ve all booked their holidays in November, so if we get to the semi-finals then we’re really in for trouble,” he says. “Most of the boys will be overseas so I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
It’s something he’ll take on board if it happens, but currently Anastasiadis isn’t thinking about that.
He’s still recovering from the huge win on Tuesday.
“They really went above themselves, I’m really proud of them,” he says.
Only one Greek team remains to play in the round of 16, the ‘part-timers’ South Springvale (Aris).
They take on NPL QLD champions Palm Beach Sharks on Tuesday in a very tough match.
At least they won’t be facing an A-League club like Olympic FC did. The Queensland club had to face 2012/13 A-League champions Central Coast Mariners on Tuesday and fell a respectable 1-3.
Olympic’s cup hero Jake McLean burst through on the edge of the box to make sure the Mariners didn’t underestimate them in the 52nd minute, but couldn’t get any more to make the match go into extra time.
In other FFA Cup matches last week, Melbourne Victory proved their pre-season training is going extremely well after securing a whopping 6-0 win over Tuggeranong United.
Adelaide City took a half time lead and was enough to win their match against Brisbane Strikers 1-0.