{"id":35758,"date":"2019-03-12T20:21:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T03:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=35758"},"modified":"2019-03-12T20:21:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T03:21:32","slug":"they-are-two-world-class-strikers-oneill-backs-sydney-fcs-attack-to-bolster-acl-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/03\/12\/they-are-two-world-class-strikers-oneill-backs-sydney-fcs-attack-to-bolster-acl-hopes\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They are two world-class strikers\u2019: O\u2019Neill backs Sydney FC\u2019s attack to bolster ACL hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A-League.com – SYDNEY, It\u2019s a monumental task ahead of them but Brandon O\u2019Neill believes the presence of Sydney FC\u2019s \u2018world-class\u2019 strikeforce gives them every chance against Kawasaki Frontale in the AFC Champions League on Wednesday night.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sky Blues are in Japan searching for their first win of the 2019 competition against the reigning J-League champions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite creating a number of excellent chances against Ulsan Hyundai, Steve Corica\u2019s men were held to a 0-0 draw in their opening Group H clash last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But O\u2019Neill is confident the new-look partnership between Adam Le Fondre and Reza Ghoochannejhad in attack will continue to blossom and says the pair are key to Sydney FC\u2019s hopes for more than just their goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are two world-class strikers,\u201d O\u2019Neill told reporters at the official pre-match press conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can all see what type of players they are, they love scoring goals and they love to get into attacking positions to make sure they can score those goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing better as a midfielder knowing that if you can provide a forward ball good enough for them to run onto, even if it is a 40-60% chance they might score, more often than not they will take that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To accompany their goalscoring attributes, they are terribly hard workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey defend from the front they start everything we want to do defensively and another string to their bow they are two top quality people. We\u2019re very lucky to have both of them in our team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair are sure to be closely marked by the Kawasaki defence but the Sky Blues are well aware of the threats in the home team\u2019s ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veteran playmaker Kengo Nakamura continues to pull the strings in Frontale\u2019s midfield, while new Brazilian recruit Leandro scored a double in the J-League over the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are all-round a very good team. A lot of quality players with the ball,\u201d Corica said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to be defensively very strong against them. But also, we are very good with the ball and we expect our team to have a lot of the ball and to play very good football against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we can\u2019t counter-attack against them we will but we are a possession-based team as well and we want to have control of the match.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sydney FC were unbeaten in all three of their away games in the ACL in 2018 and head into this clash having not conceded a goal in each of their last three games in all competitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll over the pitch we are very strong and very balanced. We defend as a team, we attack as a team and when we get our chances we have attackers we know can not only finish but help other people finish as well,\u201d O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen that throughout the year, we\u2019ve been very good with the ball but defensively we\u2019ve been very strong as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaking sure we do both of that [on Wednesday] night will go a long way to us getting the result.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A-League.com – SYDNEY, It\u2019s a monumental task ahead of them but Brandon O\u2019Neill believes the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":35759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,89,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":739,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35760,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35758\/revisions\/35760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}