White City’s fate has been sealed with a 2-0 loss against Adelaide Comets in Round 24 of the PlayStation4 National Premier League South Australia at Santos Stadium last Saturday.

Evan Kostopoulos and Evan Ramos scored for the Comets to secure league survival for the Mile End club, while White City will be playing State League next season.

While White City had theoretical chances of survival with other results needed to go their way, Miki Petkovic said that he and his team mates went into the match with “no pressure on us”.

“Even a win wouldn’t do anything for us in terms of survival, but we still wanted a win to finish the season on a positive,” Petkovic said.

“I believe we created better chances in both halves and deserved a goal but it never came; story of our season.”

Despite the loss, the mood is still positive.

“Yeah, we’re a little upset but we’re in this together,” Petkovic said.

“It’s been a tough, long season for us but that’s life; bigger, better, stronger things are coming our way.
“Fifteen year old Ninko Beric made his debut for the club and was fantastic when he came on at half time; promising future ahead of him.”

For Comets midfielder David Makridis “satisfaction” was the key word on his take on the win.

“Three weeks ago we lost seven games in a row,”Makridis said,” in the last three games, we had three wins and we didn’t really play pretty football, but we went out with a plan and we executed that plan perfectly over the three weeks.”

“It wasn’t pretty to watch, but it got us over the line and now we secured our place in the league, which the aim was.”

Makridis further on the plan:

“We got a lot of talented players in the team, we know we can score,” he said.
“A big problem for us was conceding goals, so the main focus for us was keeping shape and not conceding and in those three games we only conceded one goal.”

While the Comets went through with their plan sitting back and waiting on the counter, White City controlled the majority of possession without threatening the opposition’s goal.

Instead it was the host that threatened first with a saved shot and a near miss within the first 20 minutes.
However, in the 38th minute it appeared that White City struck first, but Nikola Mileusnic was called to be offside.

The Comets took the lead one minute before half time, when a cut back from the left wing arrived at the feet of Kostapoulos on the edge of the box, who struck it neatly the first time to get it past White City goalkeeper, Joshua Negrean.

White City returned from the break the stronger of the two, pressurising the Comets defence and attacking with confidence.

The visitors came close to a goal two minutes after the restart with Kyle Markham’s header just missing the goal with Stefan Zakanovic striking the crossbar with a shot from the right wing.

The Comets responded with a counter through Samuel Tesfagabr that was narrowly saved with the following corner resulting in a goal, when Evan Ramos nudged the ball in after it was initially cleared off the line.
White City controlled possession and continued to press without creating many clear cut chances, whilst the Comets sat back and absorbed the pressure until the final whistle.

Comets claim their third win in a row to remain in eighth place, whilst White City sits second- bottom.

Written by Christopher Munker