After a late surge against Shanghai Shenhua, Central Coast Mariners are done with their gauntlet of Chinese opponents and finally have a point to their name in the AFC Champions League Elite. However, things won’t get any easier for the Coasties, as they must now fly to Japan and face Vissel Kobe, the reigning J1 League champions who sit at the top of the East Asian table. Before 11th place challenges first at Kobe City Misaki Park Stadium, let’s see where these teams stand at the halfway mark of the league stage and consider what the Mariners will need to do to make the most of it.
After losing to Kevin Muscat’s Shanghai Port just days before that team clinched its second straight Chinese Super League title, the Mariners hosted Port’s arch-rivals Shanghai Shenhua, fresh off the pain of falling one point short of that glory. For a while there, it looked like the Mariners would be in for more of the same.
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Despite creating all sorts of chances in the first half and outshooting the visitors ten to four, CCM couldn’t cash any of it in, and when things returned from a scoreless half-time, the Flowers punished the Coasties dearly for their mistakes.
First, early injury sub Yu Hanchao handed his strike partner André Luis a give-and-go, which Luis launched from just outside the box to open the scoring in the 50th minute. Yu would score one himself not long after, receiving the ball with a spin from Hongkonger Shinichi Chan and firing an impressive shot to double Shenhua’s advantage.
However, rather than back down, the Mariners found their resolve and started punching back. Dylan Peraić-Cullen, starting in net again as he had against Port, sparked an end-to-end sequence that Shenhua tried to break up, but Sabit Ngor simply recovered it, danced past Bao Yaxiong, and punched it into the empty net. Shenhua would fight fiercely to protect their lead, even appearing to sink the dagger at the end of regulation, but the offside flag took it away. That left the door open for Mikael Doka to take one last corner in stoppage time, and while it didn’t go straight to Bailey Brandtman, the 19-year-old stuck his leg out and bounced it in, scoring his first professional goal in the process. With no time for Shenhua to respond, the Mariners took the money and ran, and they’ve now finally got a point to their name in this league stage.
That theme of long-awaited rewards also played out in the A-League, as just a few days ago, the Mariners finally scored their first post-treble win with a 2-1 victory over the Jets in a Unite Round edition of the F3 Derby. Granted, that came down to an own goal, but it’s a crucial sign of life, and with the team approaching the back half of their East Asian schedule in survival mode, they’ll take every scrap of momentum they can get.
Traditionally a hard-luck club, Vissel Kobe have recently bloomed into one of Japan’s most fearsome squads. Last year, they won the J1 League for the first time, and on top of being on track to successfully defend their title, they’ll come into this continental bout fresh off winning their second Emperor’s Cup against Gamba Osaka. Vissel are also the last undefeated team standing in ACL Elite’s Eastern league—after a scoreless opener against Buriram United, Vissel defeated Shandong Taishan 2-1, then whacked Korean sides Ulsan HD and Gwangju with successive 2-0 victories.
In attack, Vissel’s hottest hand right now is Taisei Miyashiro, who’s currently having a career year. He’s scored ten goals in league play, four of Kobe’s six goals in Asia, and played the hero in the Emperor’s Cup final, scoring the deciding goal in the 64th minute. If he gets shut down, they’ll turn to the likes of Yoshinori Muto and Yuya Osako, both of whom have racked up 11 goals and seven assists in the J1. Brazilian winger Jean Patric rounds out the main options up front, and while he has no goal involvements in this tournament yet, he’s done practically everything else asked of him thus far.
Yet more threats lurk in the midfield, where Daiju Sasaki has proved a versatile threat, with five goals and four assists in league play. Right alongside him is Takahiro Ogihara, who’s not the same scoring threat, but is an effective pure passer, threading the needle for four J1 assists of his own.
Finally, Vissel’s back line features no shortage of capable sentries to protect keeper Daiya Maekawa. Gotoku Sakai has been right up there with Miyashiro as one of Kobe’s all-around standouts in ACL Elite action. Tetsushi Yamakawa and Matheus Thuler make a tough twosome of center-backs to overcome. And when Vissel has the ball, Ryo Hatsuse is quite the orchestrator, co-leading the team with seven assists in league play.
There have been multiple signs of improvement in this Mariners squad, both at the domestic and continental levels. The battle for No.1 goalie tilting Dylan Peraić-Cullen’s way has been a huge boost—the teenage Canberran has played admirably against both sides of the Shanghai derby, and though he allowed five goals in those games, he’s been far more composed than Adam Pavlesic was against Shandong and Buriram. In the outfield, the rest of the team is starting to match up to Mikael Doka’s excellence, ensuring he doesn’t have to try and win it by himself. Little by little, that’s paying increasing dividends, including that all-important first win in Australia, and if the Coasties keep building on this, a first win in Asia could soon follow.
Brian Kaltak of the Mariners. (Photo by Jason McCawley/Getty Images)
However, their schedule means they’ll have to run another three-in-four gauntlet against the best Japanese teams around, and facing Vissel Kobe on the road will be an absolute trial by fire. The Mariners will have their hands full fighting off Vissel Kobe’s attack, but with Taisei Miyashiro getting acclimated to Asia far in advance of his teammates, CCM’s back line may have a way to gum up those works. If they deny Miyashiro clear shots and force him to act as more of a distributor than a sniper, the A-Leaguers’ window of opportunity will open up significantly.
To seize on that window, the rest of the team will have to continue stepping up. One of the biggest keys to that glorious AFC Cup run was that anyone and everyone could be the hero of the day, as obscure Mariner after obscure Mariner made his name with clutch performances; it kept opposing teams guessing about who they needed to snuff out to stand a chance.
They started to capture that energy again against Shenhua, but the question now is if they can keep it up consistently because at this stage, the Mariners are fighting for pure survival. They have four matches to move three places up the standings, and every point will only grow more precious from here. The better they play in Kobe, the more stable the road ahead becomes, and if they can hand Vissel their first loss of the stage, it’ll put the whole Pacific Rim on notice.
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