W-League Championship: Melbourne City FC 2-0 Perth Glory

Melbourne City FC won the W-League championship on February 12, 2017 by defeating the Perth Glory 2-0 in front of 4,591 fans in NIB Stadium.

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First the lineups of the two finalists:

First-Half Highlights:

• 1′ (first minute) – Yanez receives a nice cross, but heads the ball down for an easy save.
• 7′- Alleway sloppily gives the ball to Kerr, but recovers in time to stop a goal scoring opportunity for Perth.
• 28′ -Tymrak is wide open for an easy goal and “skies” it out of play.
• 37′ -Luik has across to Fishlock, who heads the ball, but goes wide right of goal.
• 41′ – Yanez from 18 yards outs has a nice shot, but just misses the upper corner of goal.
• Also throughout the half, DiBernardo had several shots, mostly about 20 yards out going over the bar.
• 45′- In the penalty box area, Yanez passes to Tymrak, who passes to back to Yanez, who has a nice cross. Fishlock just gets a toe on the ball to re-direct the ball into the corner of the net. GOAL!
• Halftime – Melbourne City is leading 1-0 over Perth.

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Second-Half Highlights:

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• 56′ – Fishlock is one on one with goalkeeper Dal Busco, and the goalkeeper makes a nice save grabbing the ball at her feet.
• 59′- Barnes bravely tackles the ball away from Kerr in the penalty box area, resulting a corner kick. The corner kick play later resulted in loss of possession for Perth.
• For the next ten minutes or so, Melbourne goalkeeper Williams is busy making several easy saves from several Perth players. None is a real goal scoring threat.
• 72′ – Yanez has one of those shot/cross combinations that completely fooled the Perth goalkeeper, who may have gotten her fingertips on it. Nevertheless, it goes in and scores a GOAL! Melbourne now leads 2-0.
• From here Melbourne goes into a bunker defense and Perth gets more desperate, losing any consistency in their play.
• 79′ – Perth fans are upset at what seemed to be a time-wasting ploy by Melbourne . Play is stopped as Yanez is down at the penalty box area forcing the referee to stop play, and ending a Perth drive. Yanez was down momentarily, and the injury not serious as she returned a minute later.
• There were several weak attempts by Perth, but Melbourne goalkeeper Williams was not stressed and the game ends after five minutes of extra time.

Next: Winningest MLS Franchises in League History

You can watch highlights of the game here on ESPN3.

Congratulations to W-League season nine champions Melbourne City FC!

For NWSL fans, pre-season begins around mid-March, and the season will open around April 15th. In the next few weeks, we will begin previewing each team’s roster before the season starts.