As the Wellington Phoenix lined up against Melbourne City for the 43rd iteration of this fixture, you could be forgiven for feeling like City were there for the taking for Giancarlo Italiano's side. They’d had a short turnaround – having played the Central Coast Mariners only three days prior – with several key players unavailable. Even the paltry partisan crowd of 5,139 felt lethargic in the slow, sunny heat of a dwindling Friday afternoon. A mere minute into the game, the ball crossed the Phoenix byline, but there was no ball boy, forcing one of the fluorescent t-shirt-clad Melbourne City kitmen to jog the width of the pitch to retrieve the ball so play could resume. It set the tone for the malaise and molasses-esque pace that would follow, but – unfortunately for the Phoenix – it wasn’t their opposition that started slowly. Wellington would labour to a dour, drab 2-0 defeat – their fifth of the season, and one more than they lost for the whole duration of last season – in a match that must undoubtedly catalyse a significant rethink of how Italiano’s side play with the squad he has at his disposal. Below, Front Page Football examines what this result might mean and why the Phoenix’s fortunes seem to be slipping further from last season's rose-tinted highs.
Giancarlo Italiano is experiencing a much more difficult second season as Wellington Phoenix head coach. (Image: Photomac)
First – is there such a thing as curses?
Much has been made of the “AAMI Park curse” – the phenomenon that has seen the Wellington Phoenix fail to win a game at the stadium, shared by Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory, in almost eight years (the last Phoenix win there came in April 2017, a 3-0 rout of a Victory side that contained current Phoenix talisman Kosta Barbarouses). Particularly when it comes to City – who Wellington hasn’t beaten on Victorian soil since December 2013 – the Phoenix struggle away from home. Weigh up the factors behind this (namely, City’s dominance since its 100% acquisition by the City Football Group in 2014, plus the Phoenix’s historically poor away record), and it’s not hard to see why Wellington struggles so severely at the home of the A-Leagues' most well-heeled club.
But at what point does a historical quirk become a self-fulfilling prophecy? And to what extent does this data play into the coach and players' minds when they enter a fixture where the statistics are stacked so spectacularly against them?
“Even the Undertaker lost eventually”, said Nix boss Giancarlo Italiano before the game, referring to that wrestler’s 21-game WrestleMania winning streak, which lasted from 1991 to 2013. A humorous quip to offset the pressure on his ailing side, perhaps? Or an implicit suggestion that these kinds of ‘hoodoos’ actually figure prominently in players' heads before the matches? Given Italiano has been proven to harbour superstitious proclivities (he refuses to wear gameday outfits when his side has lost), I’d suggest that, despite the jokes, this is something Italiano feels acutely. Did it play into how he approached this clash – the 21st time this Wellington side has been beaten by Melbourne City – on 3 January 2025?
I’d suggest that it did.
I’d suggest it did because the Phoenix played like they expected to lose. We’ve seen these defensive, park-the-bus tactics from Chiefy before, of course – Wellington’s ability to shut up shop and see out tight games was a key cog in the success of their history-making 2023/24 season – but rarely have we seen it from the first minute of the game. Or in a situation where the Phoenix were first 1-0 down, and then – as the match drew mercifully towards its close – 2-0 down, too. In other words, the questions of whether footballing curses are real or whether the Phoenix is the victim of one don’t matter. Because Wellington is playing like they’re under the pernicious influence of black magic, it’s seen them lose four of their last five matches to slide to 10th on the A-League Men ladder after 10 matches.
Where do we start in investigating the wreckage? Which piece of debris do we pick up first?
Perhaps it’s the fact that the Phoenix managed one shot on goal – a tame, off-target, and ultimately blocked effort from rare Wellington bright spark Luke Brooke-Smith with an xG of 0.03 – to Melbourne City’s 22 efforts. Perhaps it was the fact that time and again, Roberto De Zerbi disciple Italiano continued to encourage his players to pass out from the back under a high press, to increasingly excited noises from a home crowd smelling blood, only for Wellington to concede possession at the edge of their final third repeatedly.
Perhaps it was that this team – despite going toe-to-toe with Melbourne City in the possession stakes – seemed to be facing an invisible wall preventing them from having any of that ball retention in the opposition half (let alone the opposition third). For all the attacking guile and promise of youngsters like Luke Supyk and his namesake Brooke-Smith, and for all the experience promised by an experienced midfield axis of Kazuki Nagasawa and Paulo Retre, it’s telling that the situations in which the Phoenix looked most likely to threaten came from long balls punted hopefully to the 34-year-old Kosta Barbarouses.
Barbarouses is an excellent player and a local boy, and it’s been amazing to see him revel in the excellent late-career form he’s been in. But he is also 5’ 6”. He is not a target man.
Kosta Barbarouses' six goals so far this season equate to 50% of Wellington's total tally. (Image: Tahlia Daly)
But of course, it’s not really Wellington’s attack that’s the issue. Even last season – when the Nix had the talents of Bozhidar Kraev, Ben Old, and Oskar Zawada to rely on – the side wasn’t prolific, scoring only 42 goals in 27 games at a rate of 1.55 goals per game. This season, the Phoenix's 12 goals in 10 games have them scoring at a rate a little below that, but not by much (a three-goal haul in each of their next two games, however unlikely-looking, would be enough to catch up).
No, the real key to the Phoenix's impressive 2023/24 campaign wasn’t their attack but their defence, and it’s here that the drop-off in performance has been most notable.
Last season, the Phoenix conceded a league-low 26 goals in 27 matches (0.96 goals a game). Across the first 10 of this campaign, they’ve already seen 14 goals (1.4 per game) fly past unfortunate goalkeeper Josh Oluwayemi – more than half the amount they let in last season.
So what went wrong?
Here, it’s easy to point to the departures of Alex Paulsen and Finn Surman in the off-season as the biggest reasons for the Phoenix’s lack of consistency and form so far this campaign. Both were good with their feet – Paulsen especially – an attribute that’s vital to the way Italiano wants to set up. Yet it’s also becoming increasingly clear that other sides are figuring this Wellington Phoenix side out – a realisation that came to a crescendo when first Harry Politidis, then Nathaniel Atkinson swept home for City.
It’s a well-worn trope – but accurate – that teams with a new manager get a grace period when other teams aren’t quite sure how they’ll set up and play when the only certainty is uncertainty.
What is for sure now is that teams facing Wellington will employ a high press against a dithering Nix defence determined to play it out the back at seemingly any cost.
Examples include Oluwayemi gifting Auckland FC’s Jake Brimmer the opener in the dying moments of a derby that until that point looked destined to finish goalless or when the Western Sydney Wanderers’ forwards looked to hound and hunt down the Phoenix back four at every opportunity.
You can, of course, point to individual mistakes. Isaac Hughes scored an own goal one week, conceded a penalty the next, and slipped – in the first minute of the game, no less – in the buildup to the Wanderers’ opening goal in that 4-1 rout. Wellington lost all three games, and Hughes was dropped for the next – which the Phoenix won – before being reinstated for the 2-0 loss to City. If anything, he’s a bad luck charm (not unlike the AAMI Park curse itself). But is he the cause of the Phoenix’s issues?
He is not.
Young Wellington Phoenix defender Isaac Hughes has had a tough month. (Image: Photomac)
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As Oluwayemi’s mistake in the Kiwi Clasico was less an emblem of poor goalkeeping and more an indicator of a malfunctioning system, Hughes’ struggles are a symptom of a broader issue – one that encompasses confidence, tactics, coaching, and personnel – rather than the cause.
This point leads us to the final question – will it get better? How?
Alex Rufer is out indefinitely with glandular fever, Marco Rojas is injured, the football is turgid, and it’s not only a question of application and execution but of mentality – because against City, Wellington were not only out-strategised and outplayed, they were outfought.
In stark contrast to the Melbourne Derby (which I reported on from a Wellington Phoenix fan’s perspective), there was also no electric atmosphere urging the home side on. Yet they seemed to be first to pounce on every loose ball, victors of every 50/50. Something was propelling them on, or at least something inhibiting the Phoenix from turning up.
Who knows? Perhaps it is the AAMI Park curse, after all. If so, it would be fitting – because right now, the Phoenix desperately need a moment of their own magic to turn their fast-fading season around.
The Wellington Phoenix are next in A-League Men action on home turf, where they take on high-flying Adelaide United at 5 pm on Saturday, 11 January. Their most recent home game saw them overcome Newcastle Jets 2-1 thanks to two superb strikes from Barbarouses and Retre.
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