Adelaide United praised by Vidmar after Shandong win

Adelaide United were praised by coach Aurelio Vidmar after a solid 2-0 away win against China’s Shandong Luneng.

Goals to Sergio van Dijk and Mathew Leckie did the damage for the Reds who made it two from two in the group stage after reigning Asian champions Pohang Steelers on matchday 1.

Despite not being the official head coach for the Asian Champions League, Vidmar is basically doing his normal job whilst Joe Mullen fills the role and he was over the moon after the positive performance and heaped praise on his players.

“It was a great win. I think it was really important that we backed up from our good win against Pohang,” Vidmar said.

“We started the game off very well, we really didn’t allow them to get any rhythm in the game, especially in that first half and then we scored a great goal.

“He (Galekovic) is a fantastic keeper, we know that and at the right times he made two fantastic saves, but he wasn’t the only one that was fantastic tonight,” Vidmar added.

“I thought our two centre halves Robbie Cornthwaite and Iain Fyfe were fantastic, Sergio up front and our midfielders were absolutely brilliant, they stay disciplined, we executed our corner extremely well and we knew that was probably an area that we could have got a little bit of joy out of and we certainly did, it was a fantastic goal from Leckie.

“The group’s mentality has been fantastic…the confidence amongst the players and within the group is very good at this point of time and winning does that.

“The performance tonight, you could see that they were stubborn, there was no way they were going to concede the goal, they were desperate in defence and everything worked very well for us.”