Sydney FC have booked their spot in the Isuzu UTE A-League semi-finals with a 1-0 win over rivals Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park.<\/p>\n
Sydney keeper Harrison Devenish-Meares was the star down one end, keeping his 12th clean sheet for the season, while striker Patrick Wood grabbed the deciding goal down the other.<\/p>\n
Nishan Velupillay nearly opened the scoring inside two minutes, drawing a strong save from Devenish-Meares.<\/p>\n
Devenish-Meares again made a fine save to get low to his right and deny Charles Nduka\u2019s effort in the 18th minute.<\/p>\n
Victory hearts were in their mouths when star midfielder Juan Mata looked to have collected Paul Okon-Engstler with a high boot while controlling the ball, however VAR cleared the incident.<\/p>\n
Victory keeper Jack Warshawsky too made a pair of impressive saves in the first half, first blocking Alexandar Popovi\u0107\u2019s header from a corner, then climbing well to keep out Akol Akon\u2019s improvised header.<\/p>\n
Devenish-Meares\u2019s reflexes were on point again early in the second-half, pulling of a ripping instinct save on Nduka\u2019s flicked-on header.<\/p>\n
It was Sydney\u2019s turn to get away with one on the hour mark, VAR deciding not to intervene on Apostolos Stamatelopoulos grabbing Jason Davidson\u2019s shirt inside the area.<\/p>\n
The referee awarded Victory a penalty moments later when Okon-Engstler was judged to have impeded Santos on his bustling run into the area, however VAR overturned the decison on review.<\/p>\n
Wood gave Sydney FC the lead just a minute after being subbed on, pouncing on a poor back pass from Franco Lino and sliding his shot past Warshawsky.<\/p>\n
Try as they might, Victory couldn\u2019t find their way through the resolute Sydney defence.<\/p>\n
Sydney FC will face off against Newcastle Jets in their semi-final match up, leaving Adelaide and Auckland to play the other semi-final.<\/p>\n
MATCH HIGHLIGHTS<\/p>\n
Sydney FC goal: Wood 80\u2032<\/p>\n
WHAT THEY SAID<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney FC have booked their spot in the Isuzu UTE A-League semi-finals with a 1-0 win over rivals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1264,1417,1418,1419,260,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-3429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-melbourne","8":"tag-a-league-men","9":"tag-a-leagues","10":"tag-almfeatured","11":"tag-almmatchreport","12":"tag-melbourne","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}