Football
Anna Harrington 4y

Victory return focus to A-League campaign

After suffering the first loss of their Asian Champions League campaign, Melbourne Victory must quickly return their focus to their floundering A-League season.

Victory were dealt a 1-0 defeat by FC Seoul but will have to quickly recover, fly home and prepare for Saturday's away game against Newcastle Jets.

With Victory nine points outside the top six, it shapes as a must-win game for Carlos Salvachua's side.

"Now we have recovery tomorrow here and after 15 hours travelling, just one training on Friday, and we go straight to Newcastle," Salvachua told Victory's website after Tuesday night's ACL match.

"We will see how we finish this trip and now we'll try to set up with our best squad for Saturday."

Salvachua said he was confident Victory - who won't feature in the ACL again until April 8 - could still progress to the knockout stage and praised his younger players in the squad.

Jay Barnett (19), Brandon Lauton (19) and Ben Carrigan (21) started while Anthony Lesiotis (19) came off the bench and goalkeeper Matthew Sutton (19) was an unused substitute.

"Of course I'm really, really pleased because we set up with three players (who were) 19 years old and one of (21), they are starting in football and (against us) we had really professional players - and they did really well," he said.

"That's the way we can develop players - we have to play with them, we know it's a risk but we have no more options now in this moment."

The ACL loss was further soured by Barnett suffering a leg injury less than 30 minutes into the game.

Salvachua said the midfielder would be assessed in Melbourne, but there were concerns over the severity of the injury.

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