Three-time winners Adelaide United are back at it again, as they make yet another deep run in the Australia Cup.
- HOW TO WATCH: Live, free and exclusive on 10 Play
- QUARTER FINALS: Match Schedule confirmed
- ANDY HARPER ANALYSIS: 10 Football's Andy Harper previews the Quarter Finals
- GET TICKETS: Adelaide United v Western Sydney Wanderers
The Reds are now preparing for their Quarter Final tie against Western Sydney Wanderers, where they will hope to avenge their defeat to the same opposition in last year’s Round of 16.
Stefan Mauk was not at the club during that previous Australia Cup campaign, having left Adelaide for Japan in February 2022.
Mauk returned to Adelaide at the start of this year for his third stint at the club, playing out the back-half of the most recent A-League Men’s season.
Having now settled back into his familiar surroundings, Mauk is looking ahead to the upcoming season and, most immediately, embracing Adelaide’s Australia Cup ambitions.
“We want to win every single game that we play,” he said.
“Yes, it’s in pre-season, but it’s not viewed as a pre-season cup for us. We want to win it.”
Adelaide have reached the Quarter Final stage with wins against Blacktown City and Olympic Kingsway.
Despite both games coming against NPL opposition, neither game has been straightforward, with the Reds coming away 3-2 winners on both occasions.
“We were good in moments of those games. Our patterns and basic structure were quite good,” Mauk said.
“But we probably weren’t sustaining it for long enough periods.”
“We also needed to be better in both games when it came to the silly mistakes we were making to cop goals. That’s something that we wanted to work on,” he said.
Regardless, Adelaide’s progress in the Australia Cup is a welcome jolt of positivity for a club looking to rebound after a disappointing 2023/24 campaign.
Mauk returned to a club that would go on to miss the finals series for the first time since 2019/20, finishing seven points outside the top six.
As a result, the Reds have spent the offseason looking for ways to reclaim their position among the upper echelon of Australian football clubs.
“There’s good changes happening at the club,” Mauk said.
“As a club last year, maybe we got a little bit lost.”
“We had to reflect on that at the end of last year and understand what we’d been doing really well in the previous years, what made the club successful.”
Perhaps the most headline-grabbing of those changes was the announcement that PSV Eindhoven legend Ernest Faber would be taking up a consulting position as Technical Director at the club.
As a senior figure at the club, Mauk has benefitted from direct conversation with Faber regarding the Dutchman’s ambitions.
“We met with him just before pre-season started. He wanted to ask us some questions to understand how things were last year,” Mauk said.
“The first thing I noticed was that he wants to win. He’s not here just for the sake of being here.”
“Then he spoke about how it’s one thing talking about it. Talking is easy. But you need to then have actions.”
“Everything needs to be set to a standard that is going to give us the best chance to win and be successful, whether you’re washing the dishes after breakfast, on the field, in the changerooms,” Mauk said.
A demand of higher standards is one Mauk is eager to meet.
Having become Adelaide’s youngest captain at the age of 25, the midfielder is well acquainted with the demands of leadership.
“You just need to lead by example,” he said.
“If I’m going to tell these players to track their runner, to do the right things, do extra gym work, work with the video analysts to see what they can get better at; I need to be doing the same thing, otherwise my words don’t mean very much.”
Leaders are a particularly valuable commodity at a club like Adelaide, where the development of young players is such a feature.
Whilst Nestory Irankunda’s astronomical progress is the standout example, Mauk is keenly aware of the wider commitment to youth development at the club.
“The way the club has been run, especially over the last three or four years, giving a lot of younger player opportunities,” he said.
“Then obviously by selling those players, from a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense.”
“This year there will definitely be young players getting opportunities and it’s just whether they take them or not. I’d be very surprised if there’s not a few starting from Round 1,” he said.
The new crop of young talent threatening to break-out is the Reds’ obvious selling point heading into the new campaign.
Although Mauk hesitates to place too much expectation on any one person’s shoulders, he is hopeful that some of his younger teammates might take the next step this season.
“Jonny Yull, talent wise, is very good. On the ball, he’s technically one of the best, maybe the best, player in our team,” Mauk said.
“Then you’ve got Panashe Madanha who, physically, is just a machine. The way football is now, you need to have that physical side of the game and he’s got that very easily.”
“Luka Jovanovic can score a lot of goals if he gets the opportunities too,” he said.
The potential is clear to see.
Adelaide’s biggest test of the season so far though will come in Thursday night's tie against the Wanderers.
Led by new coach Alen Stajcic, Western Sydney remain a largely unknown quantity ahead of the new campaign.
However, Mauk is wary of the Wanderer’s perennial threat.
“They’ve always had good players individually,” he said.
“Last year they had periods where they were one of the best teams in the league.”
“But for us it’s about focusing on us and what we need to do well so that we can nullify them,” he said.
Whilst such on-field matters are his most pressing concerns, Mauk has also been hard at work off the field to find new ways to contribute to Australian football.
An established contributor in football media, Mauk has recently launched a new radio show on South Australia’s FIVEAA, ‘The World Game with Stefan Mauk’.
As with his football, Mauk’s media activity is driven by a larger purpose.
“The reason I started my podcast with Ben Garuccio, why I’m quite vocal on social media, why I started this radio show is because I want football to be as big as it can possibly be,” he said.
“It lacks the media coverage that it deserves. To grow anything, it needs to be visible.”
In a time Australian football requires more awareness, Mauk hopes to use his platform to benefit the game.
“Us as current players, we’ve been dealt the short straw with this time of our careers. We are struggling with TV ratings, the media attention, the security of understanding what is actually happening with the game,” he said.
“Just trying to do our bit as players helps massively.”
“That’s all I’m really trying to do, to leave the game in a better place than I got it in.”
Match Details
Adelaide United v Western Sydney Wanderers
Kick-off: 7:00pm Local / 7:30pm AEST
ServiceFM Stadium
GET TICKETS
GET DIRECTIONS
