Gold Coast striker Chris Broadfoot has pushed his claims for a return to Miron Bleiberg’s A-League squad after scoring a hat-trick in his side’s 4-0 win over Sydney FC in the National Youth League encounter at the SFS on Sunday.
Gold Coast striker Chris Broadfoot has pushed his claims for a return to Miron Bleiberg’s A-League squad after scoring a hat-trick in his side’s 4-0 win over Sydney FC in the National Youth League encounter at the SFS on Sunday.
Broadfoot, who has made a couple of A-League appearances this season, did his chances of a return no harm with some clinical finishing that maintains Gold Coast’s unbeaten start to the year.
A stunning second half free kick from impressive midfielder Koh Satake completed the rout for the defending NYL champions.
The Sky Blues were made to pay for some poor finishing, particularly towards the back end of the first half, where they dominated possession and had some wonderful opportunities, only to find Gold Coast goalkeeper Scott Higgins too hard to beat.
While Gold Coast continue to go from strength to strength, Sydney remain winless but coach Steve Corica can take some heart from his young side’s performance, especially in the first half.
The Gold Coast boasted a starting line-up with five players with some A-League experience – including veteran Dutchman Bas Van Den Brink – and it was no surprise that two of those players were involved in the opening goal on just six minutes.
The exotically-named Golgol Mebrathu was given too much time and space in the middle of the park and the Eritrean-born flyer slipped a nice pass through to Broadfoot who finished powerfully past keeper Aaron Liddell from an acute angle.
Sydney were under pressure for the early stages but almost equalised against the run of play just five minutes later but Gold Coast custodian Higgins did well to block David Gullo’s shot.
After a nervous first 20 minutes Sydney slowly started to work their way into the game and produced enough opportunities to at least go to the break on level terms but for a mixture of bad luck and wayward finishing.
Sky Blues midfielder Tomislav Cirjak was the first to try his luck when the ball fell to his feet just outside the box but his shot from 22 metres out lacked the pace to trouble Higgins. But it was a sign of things to come.
Sydney playmaker Wely Al-Rikaby started to dictate play in the middle of the park and it was his delightful through ball that released Gullo into a one-on-one opportunity with Higgins but his ferocious shot cannoned back off the bar.
The best chances continued to fall to Gullo and he again found the Gold Coast shot-stopper too hard to beat 15 minutes before half-time, with Justin Hayward somehow heading the rebound over the bar.
The visitors started the second half much like the first and should have extended their lead within five minutes of the resumption.
First Liddell denied Mebrathu with a sensational reflex save after the Gold Coast midfielder had gone on a blistering 50m individual run from inside his own half.
From the ensuing corner Gold Coast skipper Zac Anderson was too strong for his marker but he guided his header the wrong side of the post.
Set pieces were causing the Sydney defence plenty of problems all afternoon and it was from another corner the visitors almost doubled their advantage but defender Ben Wearing wasted his free header from just six yards out.
But it didn’t matter as Satake sent his free-kick from just outside the box past a despairing a Liddell into the bottom corner of the net with 20 minutes left before Broadfoot completed his hat-trick with two goals in the last 12 minutes.
The only downside for the Gold Coast was an injury to the impressive Mebrathu, who limped off with 30 minutes left with a leg injury.
Sydney FC 0
Gold Coast United 4 (Broadfoot 6, 78, 92 Satake 70)
