Adelaide boss Carl Veart has praised Nestory Irankunda for his increasing maturity after the teen phenom rose above intense provocation to play a starring role in the Reds’ win over Sydney FC.
Irankunda grabbed a goal in Adelaide’s 4-3 victory against the Sky Blues on Saturday which snapped the club’s four-game winless run.
The 17-year-old may have been upstaged by Hiroshi Ibusuki, who grabbed a hat-trick, but Veart was quick to praise Irankunda’s calmness when the Bayern Munich-bound winger was clattered by Luke Brattan late in the first half.
The veteran Sydney midfielder sought Irankunda out to give him a piece of his mind and was clearly looking to get under the teenager’s skin.
But rather than bite back at a ropeable Brattan, Irankunda walked away and refused to let the Sydney captain get the better of him.
Irankunda has shown at times this season that he still has work to do on his emotions but Veart was keen to laud the youngster for showing a calmer head.
“We’ve been working with Nestory a lot and you can see that he's making good strides in that maturity,” Veart said.
“He needs to keep working on it because he does cop a lot of contact from opposition teams and a lot of little things like that..
“It's hard for a young player to deal with because he just wants to play football and he wants to attack.
“Then when players go out there to try and stop him, it makes it difficult and I think he has started to really deal with that quite well.”
Veart admitted he was feeling nervous in the final 15 minutes when Sydney grabbed two late goals to set up a grandstand finish after taking Irankunda and Ibusuki from the field.
Fortunately for the Reds, they hung on and will now look to build on the win when they host Melbourne City next week.
“We seem to like to do it the hard way,” Veart said.
“We’re not very good when we sit off and defend, we always want to keep on attacking.
“But we are just happy to have got the three points in the end.”
