Wednesday 17 February 2016

SWEET ADELAIDE

If you happen to be writing a blog overlooking the Adelaide Oval, it would be churlish not to mention this brilliant city, with its cricket stadium, tennis courts and rowing on the River Torrens.

Not so important, probably, to city locals are Adelaide United, an Hyundai A League team, one of ten, competing in the top division of Australian Soccer. 

Founded in 2003, United have been in the A league for 11 seasons and have been "Premiers" once. They won the league but didn't win the final play offs. The club uses the Hindmarsh Stadium, a multi purpose ground owned by the city, which holds around 16.500 fans. The stadium is sponsored by Coopers' Brewery. 

Probably the club's greatest achievement was to qualify in 2008-9 for the FIFA World Club Cup.

In January 2011, United broke the record for the highest score in an A League match when they beat North Queensland Fury 8-1. In that game two players scored hat tricks, Marcos Flores and Sergio van Dijk. This is also a record for the Australian Football Federation. 
Flores started his career in Argentina with the highly respectable Newells Old Boys. He has been round the block a bit and turned out 31 times for United in 2010-11. Van Dijk is of Indonesian origin and played for his country three times.

In 2014, United beat Perth Glory 1-0 to win the FFA Cup. The club holds the record for the fastest goal scored in the AL in 13 seconds by Louis Bains.

Their manager is Guillermo Amor who started his career at Benidorm and played for Barcelona over 300 times and for Spain nearly 40 times at the height of his career, including a European Championship and a World Cup.

He then went to Fiorentina, Villareal and amazingly to Livingstone in Scotland where he concluded his playing career with three games in 2003.

Unkted play Melbourne Victory away this weekend and lying 3rd in the division at the moment should make them favourites to win this tie.



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