Samba boys in orange sink Wanderers to go top

Joga Bonito is well and truly alive in Brisbane. There was a special samba influence to the Roar’s performance on Friday night, typified by the beauty of their goals and succeeding celebrations in the 3-1 victory over Western Sydney that sent them back to the top of the table.

Whether it was Ivan Franjic’s World Cup-worthy goal, Henrique’s dancing with the ball or Kwame Yeboah’s capoeira moves, Brisbane put on a Carnivale for an Ashes-drained crowd.

The top of the table clash merited its hype early on, as the returning Besart Berisha put his hamstring problems behind him to open the scoring with a marauding run inside five minutes.

It was the first goal the Wanderers had ever conceded in the opening 20 minutes of an A-League match and it soon got worse.

Henrique’s slippery work in the box set up Ivan Franjic, who volleyed home a sumptuous strike form outside the box to add another stamp of approval on his ticket to Brazil.

Just as it seemed the Roar were sending the visitors back home to their favelas, a mental lapse from Jade North gifted Mark Bridge possession and he laid off well for Brendon Santalab to chip the out-rushing Michael Theo.

One man who has sat on an opposite bench to Brazil at a World Cup is Shinji Ono and he would have felt like history was repeating itself as he succumbed to injury before half time.

Desperate to avoid their first defeat of the season, Western Sydney dominated possession and came close to levelling when substitute Labinot Haliti’s header looped onto the crossbar.

But substitute Kwame Yeboah sealed the result with another breathtaking strike in injury time, following his match-winner at Central Coast two weeks ago.

Queue the 19-year old flipping through the air in his best attempt at capoeira, much to the bemusement of coach Mike Mulvey and his trying injury list. 

Mulvey was impressed with Yeboah, but stressed the team switched off too easily after taking early control of the match.

“You bring that youthful exuberance (Yeboah) and you want him to harass the two centre backs – he did that and they had less time on the ball,” Mulvey said.

“We went for the early goal, we got it and it paid dividends.

“But what happened was we scored the second and we thought, this is it, we don’t have to do anymore and we stopped – you can’t do that against them.”

His counterpart Tony Popovic took the positives out of tasting defeat to the Roar for the first time in five matches.

“The group is a bit disappointed because of how well they played, but also disappointed for how poor they were in the first twenty (minutes),” he said.

“Had we been sitting here and come away with a win I wouldn’t have been surprised – from the twenty minute mark onward.

“But you cannot give a good team like Brisbane a two goal start.”

 Brisbane Roar: 1.Michael THEO (gk), 2.Matthew SMITH (c), 5. Ivan FRANJIC, 10. HENRIQUE (28. Brandon BORRELLO 78’), 13. Jade NORTH, 17.Matt McKAY, 18.Luke BRATTAN (14. Diogo FERREIRA 79’), 19.Jack HINGERT, 22.Thomas BROICH, 26. Corey BROWN, 29.Kwame YEBOAH (23. Dimitri PETRATOS 64’)

Western Sydney Wanderers: 1. Ante COVIC (gk), 2. Shannon COLE (12.Tahj MINNIECON 69’), 3. Adam D’APUZZO, 4. Nikolai TOPOR-STANLEY (c), 6.Jerome POLENZ, 8.Mateo POLJAK, 10.Aaron MOOY, 11.Brendon SANTALAB (22. Dean HEFFERNAN 83’), 13.Matthew SPIRANOVIC, 19.Mark BRIDGE, 21.Shinji ONO (7.Labinot HALITI 42’)

Crowd: 19,066