Il Divo Del Piero; Sydney open with class

Life they say begins at 40 – well almost if you’re ADP. For the record he’s 39 next month and what a record it is.

He is in his twelfth season – that’s as captain (eleven previous with Juventus in the Serie A) - but age has seemed to have had no impact on him. He’s like the proverbial red vino which matures with age but Del Piero is no ordinary drop of red Chianti.

He’s the magician and reads the game so beautifully that it is almost predictable that every Sydney FC success will have his imprimatur all over it.

Simply extraordinary just doesn’t cut it anymore – a thesaurus full of adjectives might not even suffice.

Sydney FC’s 2-0 victory after all the hype is simply a very good start and, as for Del Piero, he has lived up to all the expectations that everyone had on him going into his second A-League season.

Newcastle Jets came to Allianz Stadium to win and full credit to them for that attitude, but against the Del Piero tsunami there was little they could do.

Before the Del Piero show took centre stage Matt Thompson, a former Jet who signed with Sydney FC only hours before kick-off, hit the crossbar with a brilliant shot that eventually rebounded off Mark Birighitti and away to safety.

Del Piero scored the first goal despite an infantry of Newcastle Jets defenders trying to prevent him from doing so and perhaps not even a cavalry could have done too much.

The second goal after the interval was once again his even though young Joel Chianese put the ball in the back of the net.

Newcastle Jets gave ADP so much space that Hannibal’s elephants could have charged through and when ADP saw the opportunity he pounced. Chianese professionally executed with a clinical finish.

Late in the game Newcastle hit the crossbar when Jacob Pepper’s majestical header nearly snuck under. It wasn’t their night and it never really looked like it.

It’s easy to get carried away with Del Piero’s extraordinary start because after all the entire A-League season seems to have been promoted around his image, but this is well and truly a player of the highest order. By far the greatest to have ever played in Australian domestic football.

There were some big names missing from both sides including Emile Heskey, Brett Emerton, Yairo Yau and Michael Bridges but nobody seemed to have noticed. It was all ADP.

Joe Russo reports A-League on 2SSR 99.7FM in Sydney on Sunday night as part of the ‘Sideline Eyes’ program at 7pm.