Phoenix strikes Victory and Coronavirus away as they get their fourth straight win

Wellington Phoenix imposed a harsh defeat for Melbourne Victory in a very concerned scenario regarding COVID-19 outbreak – the league future is uncertain after this weekend matches.

A very emotional moment started the day at Sky Stadium as Phoenix and Victory players honoured the victims with the mass-shooting of Christchurch that happened exactly one year ago.

After the starting of the game, it did not take long for the Wellington side to take the lead: a fantastic play by Tim Payne in the right side of the pitch, allowed him a great cross to the penalty box; Reno Piscopo chips it in to the middle of the area and the Mexican Ulises Dávila scores with a strong finish – giving and end his drought of goals, scoring his 11th of the season.

Victory did not have much time to settle their game down; surprisingly the Swedish international Ola Toivonen started from the bench, being the attacking duo of the visiting made up by Andrew Nabbout and Marco Rojas.

The duo-tried to create some trouble to Phoenix defense, forcing Stefan Marinovic to some hard stops during the game. But the excellent moment of the home side continued as Gary Hooper headed to the nets after a fantastic assist of Liberato Cacace still in the first half, giving Phoenix a very comfortable lead.

The team coached by Ufuk Talay allowed Victory have more the possesion of the ball, but the visitors could not create major threats to Marinovic goal – all of their possibilities being well-controled by the defensive duo Luke DeVere and Steven Taylor alongside their defensive system.

The 2-0 advatange was the result for Phoenix at the break; but it did not take long after the beginning of the second half for the New Zealand side to score another. The combination Hooper-Ball worked very well again as the marksman provided a great long ball to his compatriot, Ball passed beat two Victory defenders to score the third of his team with a clinical finish.

The New Zealanders were three ahead and also had chances to increase their lead; but it was Victory who scored after a shot of Andrew Nabbout deflected by Ola Toivonen after coming from the bench – after some minutes of confusion, VAR checked referee call to allow the goal and detected Toivonen was in an off-side position, rulling out Victory’s goal to keep the clean sheet of Phoenix.

The Nix managed very well the match, with a top-class performance not allowing many threats coming from Marco Rojas and his teammates. The attacking trio composed by Ball, Dávila and Hooper worked very, very well alongside the strong midifielders Cameron Devlin and Matti Steinmann. Tim Payne has a very good match – specially in attack – while the always good Liberato Cacace continued his superb form. Defensively, Phoenix got another clean sheet in the run with a solid performance of DeVere and Steven Taylor in the heart of defense.

The future of A-League will be decided in the following days regarding the concerns around Coronavirus outbreak. The situation in numbers is still not much serious in Australia and New Zealand, but the governments of both nations are taking caution actions to prevent the fast-spreading virus to harm more its countries.

Phoenix, at the moment, stands at 3rd spot in the contention just one point behind Melbourne Victory in the process. The New Zealand side expects the league can continue as they have real chances to end-up the regular season in the top-two of A-League, sealing so a very important advantage for the playoffs – being a home win away from their first ever appearance at a grand final.