Melbourne Victory head coach Kevin Muscat hailed another electric performance from Elvis Kamsoba after his side’s 1-1 draw with Wellington Phoenix.
Kamsoba was dangerous throughout at Eden Park in Auckland, where Keisuke Honda’s penalty cancelled out Roy Krishna’s opener on Friday.
Victory had numerous chances to claim three points, but was left to rue missed opportunities as the spoils were shared in the Hyundai A-League.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Muscat discussed Victory’s performance, Kamsoba’s display and provided an update on Ola Toivonen.
on the game…
“The point is the outcome so I’m really pleased with the performance and we’ll go away and we’ll analyse the game. We earnt and created a number of chances, very, very good chances. I thought going behind was against the run of play, Tommy (Deng) inadvertently flicks the ball into Storm (Roux) and it just falls for Roy and he tucks it away, but up until that point, I thought in the first half we were in control of things, playing some really good stuff and had some really good chances. Kenny (Athiu) had a couple of good chances, making some really good runs, playing on shoulders, and there’s the second half, to concede at that point, we took over after that in my view, we took over. Yes, you’ll point to Roy had another good chance, whether it would’ve stood because he looked offside, whether it would’ve stood or not we’ll never know, but if you’re taking the game on, you’re going to concede the odd chance on the counter-attack to Wellington with the pace they’ve got in the front third. We could’ve sat off, dropped off and nullified that, or beat them the way we like to play and that’s what we tried to do and very impressed, very, very proud of the performance, taking into consideration the facts – we had six-odd players unavailable and then Corey Brown falls sick overnight just to top things up. From Corey’s perspective, it was disappointing. Young Anthony (Lesiotis) comes in and it’s his first start and he was outstanding. We got some more minutes into Keisuke, we got some more minutes into Georg (Niedermeier), got some minutes into (James) Donachie, Raul (Baena) played another 90 minutes, so we’re not in a good space if you understand what I mean, but we’re heading into that area.”
on Kamsoba…
“Tremendous. You’re never certain, he did surprise the entire staff with his actual conditioning, his stamina. We’ve had players previously come out of the NPL, we’ve done it frequently, and normally it takes them a good six months to get up to speed in terms of conditioning, what’s required. Within a month, six weeks, we thought he’s progress has been that rapid. He’ll keep working and he’ll become a bigger threat. He created some opportunities for his mate Kenny, he came inside and had a shot blocked by Kenny. He was outstanding. I think everybody here appreciated he was the most exciting player on the pitch.”
on Toivonen…
“He got a knock three-odd weeks ago and it was a cork so it was treated – the knock to his thigh, he was trying to get up for the game three days later. The blood calcifies in his quad so basically you can’t move, you can’t run because you haven’t got full range because the blood’s calcified. I’ve become an expert so I can let everybody know because I don’t like being accused of not telling the truth. Is he going to be right for next weekend? I hope so, but we treat him as he presents every day.”
