AAMI Park, Melbourne | Jamie Maclaren had a purpose when he arrived at Melbourne City in January 2019 and, refreshingly, it was one he was willing to share.
A lot of players, you see, will pretend that they don’t care for individual accomplishments and the like. In this modern age of players being media training and even the most benign of declarations can be twisted into motivation by opponents, platitudes provide a repetitiously tedious safety net. You can’t say something wrong if you don’t say anything. Maclaren, though, has mostly been a refreshing figure in this regard. He doesn’t try to pretend he isn’t an individual with their own desires and ambitions; his job is to score goals, win games, and create history, he doesn’t have any shame in acknowledging that. Candor tends to characterise most of his interactions with the public, the kind of honesty born of the confidence that nine’s, especially, seem to make their lifeblood.
So four years ago, back in his hometown after a frustrating few years in Europe, he was forthright. Various measures of team success were put forth, and there’s no reason at all to not believe that they weren’t targets held in significant regard, but he also wanted to become a City legend.
Well, after his hattrick against Western United on Saturday evening, the 29-year-old needs to start setting himself some new targets. Because across the 18-year history of the A-Leagues, it is now a statistical reality that no player has proven themselves more consistently adept at putting the ball in the net than the striker from Sunbury. Forget City legend, to claim that Maclaren isn’t an A-Leagues legend is simply belligerence, regardless of any stylistic preferences in strikers.
With goals in the 13th, 66th, and 74th minute, Maclaren moved to 143 in his A-League Men career, surpassing Besart Berisha’s tally of 142. His 92 goals for City set a new record for the most ever for one ALM club, moving past Archie Thompson’s 90 for Victory. He’s about to secure an unprecedented fourth-straight ALM Golden Boot – and fifth overall – with 23 and counting in 2022-23. The Socceroo has cultivated a style wherein he doesn’t even need to play that well at all to still be a match-winner. “He wasn’t involved in the game all night and he scored a hattrick,” United coach John Aloisi said. “He didn’t have too many sniffs of the ball and he scored three goals. That’s a sign of a record-holder. He’s always alive in the box.”
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Indeed, Maclaren feels like the type of player whose legacy and status are much greater amongst his peers, opposition that have to account for him each week, than those that observe him from afar. He could perhaps be best described as a shark. There are bigger things in the ocean. There are environments that he doesn’t do too well in. But if he sniffs blood, he strikes without remorse or pity.
Yet still, there are many that would claim to not fear Maclaren, or want him in place of their starting nine. This isn’t an accusation that they’re actually being deceitful, either. Football is a game of opinions. Justifications can be found for any conclusions, ultimately, and the evidence that one uses to determine an outlook will inevitably be conditioned by biases both conscious and subconscious. Nonetheless, it is peculiar to observe how the City striker has somehow managed to carve out a niche wherein he is simultaneously the ALM’s greatest-ever goalscorer and still dismissed as an afterthought in historical discussion by many.
Perhaps it’s because amongst those atop the goalscoring charts, he’s still searching for that singular, legend-making moment. There have been significant hauls and unnerving consistency, but there isn’t a trademark moment like Berisha’s goals in the 2012 or 2015 grand finals or Thompson’s five in the 2007 decider. There’s an almost exclusive operation as a penalty-area threat and status as a penalty taker; a resume absent of long-range thunderbolts that leads to rival fans being quick to label him a ‘tap-in merchant’. Eight goals in 28 Socceroo games, a ratio of a goal every 3.5 games compared to one every 1.4 domestically likely doesn’t help, either.
Yet being in the right place at the right time, knowing where the ball is going and being in a position to receive it, having the wherewithal to react first to a half chance, and being cool enough under pressure to thread a shot through a wall of defender’s legs are skills. They don’t just happen by accident 143 times. If it was simple, everyone would do it.
They’re also skills that age well. Just 29 years old and with a style of playing in which his mind and instincts carry just as much importance as his physical demeanour, Maclaren looks at the longevity of peers such as Scott McDonald and Alessandro Diamanti and estimates that he could have another decade in him. Ten years spent in the A-Leagues, even accounting for an inevitable slowdown, would put him in a position to challenge the 240 goals of Damien Mori, the best-ever striker in Australian national league history.
“Good luck to the next guy because I know how hard I worked to get to Besart and how hard he [worked] to get to where he was,” Maclaren said.
“Mori is in a league of his own from the NSL days and it’s probably down to me to try and track him down for both competitions’ title.
“I’ll try my best to catch him. I remember people laughed at me and said ‘there’s no way you’re gonna catch Berisha’ but I tried my best to track him down.”
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Header Image Credit: Melbourne City
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