It’s been 10 years since Tottenham and Chelsea were in Sydney, but the last time they were, Alex Gersbach was wearing sky blue.
Now a 29-year-old leader at Western Sydney, he’s getting ready to face Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea at Accor Stadium on Tuesday night and admits that the arrival of Premier League giants puts a spring in the step of every A-League player.
Perhaps not as much as some of the young boys, like “massive Chelsea fan” Jarrod Carluccio: “I think he’s been thinking about it for the last seven or eight months since they announced it!”
“A lot of the young guys are talking about all the Chelsea players and stuff in the dressing room; everyone’s really excited,” Gersbach said.
“It’s a pretty cool occasion for everyone involved I think.”
The game has come at the perfect moment for the Wanderers’ players to break up the A-League off-season. They’re one month in under new boss Ufuk Talay, and opened their account with a 2-0 win over Tigers FC in the Australia Cup Round of 32 last week.
Tigers to Chelsea is some step up, but also a huge opportunity.
The Sydney Super Cup brings four blockbuster fixtures to Sydney: Chelsea vs Western Sydney Wanderers (28 July), Tottenham Hotspur vs Sydney FC (29 July), and Tottenham Hotspur vs Chelsea (1 August) and Chelsea FC Women v A-Leagues All Stars Women (12 August)— get your tickets now at sydneysupercup.com.au
“It’s all well and good to be fans of these players and these teams but Ufi has drilled it into us this week that this is no friendly game. This is a preseason match and we’re preparing for everything we’re doing on the training pitch and every game we play we’re preparing for the league and for the cup.
“We’re not treating the game any different to last week’s game in Canberra, for example.
“We’re going to go out there and work on the things we’ve been working on and we’re not going to shy away from our style. Ufi’s made a big point of that this week. It’s important for everyone to enjoy the occasion, soak it all in when you’re out there and and before the game, but once it kicks off it’s business as usual, we’re out there trying to win the game of football.”
A decade ago the London clubs toured post season, so there was a bit more of a friendly vibe to it. This time, three of the four clubs involved have new coaches, and Sydney FC’s Patrick Kisnorbo is in his first full pre-season, having replaced Talay at the club towards the end of the last domestic league campaign.
With less than a month until the Premier League kicks off, Xabi Alonso has no time to waste in Sydney.
For the A-League contingent, Gersbach’s advice doesn’t differ though despite the potentially different intensity in the game: have fun, be yourself.
“Play your usual game, even though you’re playing against world class opposition players,” he said of his advice to his younger Wanderers teammates. “All you can do is do your best and see what happens.”
Gersbach wasn’t so sure that his performance a decade ago helped seal his move to Rosenborg in Norway, but with football these days, you Neve know who watching.
“But I just think it’s a really cool opportunity for these young guys. You never know when you’re going to play against top quality opposition like that ever again, to be honest,” he added.
“It’s important to really enjoy it and and maybe these young guys can learn a lot from some of the Chelsea players – up close and personal on the pitch might be a bit different than watching on TV.”
And then, of course, come the jersey swaps.
A decade ago, Gersbach landed Nathan Ake’s – which has aged well, as he’s gone on to have a superb career winning the Premier League with Manchester City. While his pride in his jersey collection is his trades with Australians across the football planet because it holds a lot of meaning, he said the good old jersey swap “tends to be a bit of a talking point” especially amongst the youngsters.
“I’m not sure the Chelsea players will be trying to trying to grab our shirts,” he quipped.
He added: “I’ll let the younger boys grab whatever they want and I’ll take the scraps.”
With Talay in his opening months at a new club, the match takes on a higher importance than just a glamour friendly.
“It’s really important from a coach’s perspective to keep the morale high and and keep everyone feeling feeling somewhat fresh and eager and motivated to be training hard every single day when the season’s so so far away.
“Ufi’s doing a really good job of that. And I think us boys as a team are doing a really good job of holding everyone accountable and keeping everyone motivated…the next few weeks before the next Cup game, that’s going to be really important for us to keep the momentum going.
“But we’ve got a lot of guys who have done a lot of A-League pre seasons and coaching staff, so everyone knows…it can be gruelling at times, so we just got to keep it positive, keep working our arses off and winning games of football in preseason as well.
After such a disappointing campaign last season, Gersbach says Talay has been “very clear” with what he wants to see from his side this term, something that “has been great for the boys”.
Western Sydney’s Alex Gersbach. Photo: Getty Images
Speaking in Sydney on Monday morning, Brandon Borrello said the senior players had had one of those “look in the mirror” discussions.
Gersbach said that they are highly motivated to turn things around at the club.
“Without putting too much pressure on ourselves, we get that from the fans anyway. We’ve got a bunch of good young players; in my opinion things are looking really promising.”
What has that messaging been from Talay since he’s arrived?
“We want to play really good football. That’s Ufi’s style. Then when we don’t have the ball, we want to win the ball back as a lot of teams do. I think you’ll see it coming together a bit more in the next few games.
“Most importantly, we’re going to play our way and we’re going to win or lose playing our way. That’s a big point that Ufi’s made during the start of preseason.”
Premier League and global tours have an odd spot in Australia’s football calendar; they attract a lot of fans who don’t ordinarily know about or go to the A-League, but at the same time, as ‘meaningless’ as some of the games are, they generate a lot of excitement without necessarily leaving a tangible legacy.
When asked how the players feel about it, Gersbach, a veteran of the league and an advocate for Australian football, spoke passionately about the reality check these fixtures, or the World Cup halo, provide the league he loves at the moment.
“We all know that we’ve got enough football fans in this country for us to have a successful A-League. We can all agree on that. You saw it with the World Cup.
“I had people that I had thought never watched a game of football talking to me about the World Cup, knowing more knowing more about the Socceroos than I knew.
“So the love of the game is definitely there. And to be honest, we also can’t expect if someone enjoys watching Chelsea play or they enjoy watching the Socceroos play, we can’t just expect them to come to the A-League games and enjoy that. We need to make them enjoy it.
“We need to provide a a better product than is being provided at the moment and I think everyone knows that.
“And that’s sort of down to everyone involved in the league.
“(Getting those fans in) that’s the end goal, but we’re struggling to get there at the moment. Some people are working hard on it. Hopefully we can get those fans that fell in love with the Socceroos and the Matildas to fall in love with the Wanderers or other A-League clubs.
“Because there’s too many people in this country that love football for the league to be going the way it is at the moment. That’s my opinion.”