Melbourne Derby Q&A with Paartalu: 'We were made to feel inferior'

FourFourTwo Australia: What were the feelings going into the Melbourne Derby?

Erik Paartalu: At the time, we didn’t feel inferior, but we were made to feel inferior. Melbourne Victory had a long standing history, they won titles. In 2014/15 they had a stronger team, a bigger club network and fan base, so they were the ones to beat.

Every time there was a derby, you were talking about it two weeks beforehand. You’d get an email from the club asking if you wanted tickets because it would be a sell-out. Everybody knows this game is going to be 45,000 at Etihad or over 25,000 at AAMI Park.

The atmosphere on derby day is just fantastic, it’s something you miss.

FFT: What were your favourite memories?

EP: Scoring the winner in the 90th minute in 2014. But it was also lining up against Besart Berisha. He was a really close friend of mine, it was strange because before we’d even met on the pitch in Melbourne, we met for lunch and dinner and our wives were friends as well.

It was quite strange lining up against him for the first time, I remember him scoring a hat-trick in the first derby in 2014/15 where we lost 5-2. Every game after that, I just wanted to beat him and I know he felt the same way. It wasn’t dirty, it was a healthy rivalry between us. I loved seeing him on derby day because he gets so fired up for the game and we rarely stopped him!

FFT: Do you ever think about the goal in 2014?

EP: Not really, when I’m playing football in so many other countries it’s always about the next game. I don’t have time to think about these things. It’s nice when you read an article and you say ‘oh yeah, I remember doing that’, but I don’t get too carried away with it.

FFT: What was the most important thing in the lead-up to the derby?

EP: It was maintaining your composure for sure. As a younger player it’s difficult, but as an older and more experienced player, you learn how to deal with these occasions. Some players deal with it so differently. Someone like Bes gets fired up three days before the game, goes into it with all guns blazing and you think ‘man, how do you have so much energy?’. For myself it’s almost a way to deal with the huge expectation, crowd and the buzz of it all week. You use up a lot of energy, because you’re not thinking about what you have to do when you receive the ball or what you have to do off the ball.

Walking out for the game, I always tried to block everything out and just focus literally on the grass and just say ‘right, it’s 90 minutes of football, I’ve got a job to do’. You don’t want to leave the derby having a bad game or being a loser. The atmosphere, even you’ll try block it out, it gets through to you and you’re buzzing anyway, so it’s about composure.

FFT: Do you believe derbies are unpredictable regardless of where clubs are on the table?

EP: There’s no form in this game. Particularly in the A-League as well, the teams are so close with the salary cap. In that big season with Brisbane Roar playing against Gold Coast United, we didn’t assume we’d win, but we were confident enough that no one was going to come close to us. Sydney FC would probably have that same feeling now, even though they don’t admit it.

But if you’re bottom and your opponent is top going into a derby, the form doesn’t matter, it’s on the day. Maybe that bottom team is more motivated to make themselves and their supporters feel good and maybe the top team is looking at it like another game. So there’s always that extra desire from the lower team.