Adelaide United head coach Carl Veart says he hasn’t spoken to his former assistant Ross Aloisi since the start of the Isuzu UTE A-League season, as the pair prepares to face off on Sunday when the Reds host Brisbane Roar.
Aloisi spent two years working under Veart at Adelaide, a club he had previously captained and played 75 games for.
With the Roar heading to Coopers Stadium on Sunday, Veart revealed the pair remained good friends, but had not spoken in the lead up to the game.
Speaking to the media, the Adelaide coach discussed what he’s seen of the Roar under Aloisi, what has been going wrong defensively for the Reds, and how the Coopers Stadium pitch has held up since hosting the Foo Fighters concert last weekend.
Carl Veart on what he has made of Brisbane Roar so far:
“They’ve had a great start to the season had a great preseason as well. And you can see the way that they’re playing good for Brisbane, they’ve taken to Ross, and they’ve been very aggressive with their play. They’re pressing is very good so it’s important for us that we recognise where the spaces are on the pitch and look to play through their press.
“I think it will be a fairly open game. As I said they’re quite a high pressing team, you know, they want to play an attacking brand of football, very similar to ours. At times it’s going to be end to end, it’s going to be entertaining and that’s what football should be – enjoyable for the players to play and enjoyable for the supporters to come and watch.”
Carl Veart on coming up against his former assistant and current Roar coach Ross Aloisi this weekend:
“We’ve had a very good relationship as players and as coaches and mates. But I haven’t spoken to Ross now since the season started. And we’re now focused on what we can do and I want the best for our club. I want Ross to have success as a coach, but not when he plays up against us.
“Ross knows me well enough that we don’t make too many changes. I suppose we’re a little bit similar in that way that we tend to be quite stubborn with the way that we want to play football. So, I don’t think there’ll be too many surprises from us. And there won’t be too many surprises from them.”
Carl Veart on the state of the Coopers Stadium pitch after the recent Foo Fighters concert:
“I think Brisbane they’re doing a stadium tour right now – they’re going to every ground where there’s been a bit of concert on but then we’re very fortunate that we’ve got great staff here at AVM. They’ve really looked after the pitch and when you go down on the pitch and have a look at it now you wouldn’t even really be aware that there was a concert out there. That’s credit to the staff that are here looking after the pitch and that’s why it’s the best pitching in Australia because they have the best staff here to come after it.”
Carl Veart on the focus of the week after the disappointing loss to Macarthur on Monday:
“It’s something that we’ve spoken about a bit over the course of this season and over the course of my time as the coach, about being more consistent and about being more organised defensively as well. I’ve said many times this year that we can’t concede that many goals if you want to win the championship, we have to be a lot tougher to beat.
“When we play good football it’s very exciting and there’s not too many teams I don’t think that can stop us, but we just have to be a lot more consistent with it. We can’t expect to play 10-15 minutes of football and expect to win a match. The league is too difficult to do that and that’s something that we’re working on.”
Carl Veart on what has gone wrong defensively for his side:
“I think a lot of it has it’s just that pressure on the ball. It’s just not a backline problem. It’s a problem all over the pitch. We don’t get enough pressure on the ball from our attackers, which makes it easier for them to make the kind of penetrating passes. It makes it harder for then the defenders to defend and it’s something that we’ve had a good focus on this week.
“There’s no point going to put pressure on the ball and stay standing off a metre and are still allowing them to play forward and that’s what’s happened far too much in the games that we’ve lost this year. The pressure just hasn’t been good enough on the ball and there’s something that we need to make sure we get it right every week.
