Put aside, for a moment, anxiety around the A-Leagues’ next broadcast deal. Shelve calculations for the impending “hard” salary cap. Forget the perpetual challenges of venues, crowds, members. Of connecting the pyramid. Of all the worries in Australian football’s future.
The A-League Men kicks off on Friday for its 21st season, and for the best 300 or so footballers in the country, nothing matters more than when the referee blows for kick-off. “Once the whistle goes, I’m going to be doing what it takes to win the game,” says Kai Trewin, the player of the year at champions Melbourne City.
City travel to Western Sydney on Saturday to meet a Wanderers side injected during the off-season with proven A-Leagues talent including Kosta Barbarouses, Angus Thurgate and Steven Ugarkovic, who played alongside Trewin at City last year. “They’ve done some really good recruiting, and they’re going to be a really strong team,” Trewin says.
The 24-year-old defender/midfielder secured his first call-up to the Socceroos last season in a breakout year that placed him firmly in contention for Tony Popovic’s squad for next year’s World Cup. Trewin’s international aspirations – as well as those of his club-mate Aziz Behich and others such as Victory forward Nishan Velupillay – will form one of this seaon’s key storylines. “If you’re playing consistently here and playing really well, I don’t think [Popovic] will be scared to pick anyone out of A-Leagues,” Trewin says.
Winger Craig Goodwin hopes his return to Adelaide will remind Popovic of his quality. The 33-year-old had off-season foot surgery fixing a problem he had managed for the past five years and had required painkilling injections. “It’s up to me to do the talking on the pitch, to provide the goals and assists for this Adelaide team to lead us to success in the early rounds, and hopefully I can be involved in the next squad,” the Reds captain said this week.
Adelaide United host the season opener on Friday night against Sydney FC. The Sky Blues have long been known as the league’s glamour club, but they lost some of their lustre last year when the five-time champions missed the finals for the first time in three years. The club have had to move home matches this season from Allianz stadium due to pitch reconstruction works, and are in a period of off-field transition following changes in head office.
Coach Ufuk Talay says the Sky Blues are “definitely” still the A-League’s glamour club. “The board change, it’s been fantastic,” he says. “It’s not just on the field with the players and the signings, but all the little stuff off the field that makes a massive difference as well.”
Sydney’s cross-town rivals the Wanderers have lost star Spanish import Juan Mata and the Johnny Warren medal winner Nicolas Milanovic, one of a crop of young attackers to have moved overseas including Adrian Segecic, Archie Goodwin, Noah Botic and Marco Tilio. Mata has headed south to Melbourne Victory, who reached the grand final last season after knocking out impressive debutants Auckland in the semi-finals.
The New Zealand club are expected to find it difficult to meet the APL’s planned hard cap of $3m next season due to the committed spending from an ownership group led by American Bill Foley. But they go into this campaign motivated to improve on their first year.
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At the other end of last year’s league table, wooden spooners Perth enter the season with some optimism, having signed championship-winning defender Brian Kaltak from the Central Coast Mariners as well as former Wales international Tom Lawrence. Second-from-bottom last season, Brisbane Roar pursued a different pre-season by taking the team to Solomon Islands and playing against the national team, tapping into the department of foreign affairs’ Pacific sporting budget.
The Roar have enough to deal with at home, however, given the club’s stadium conundrum, which chief operations officer, Zac Anderson, described as his biggest headache. Brisbane can’t access Suncorp stadium for much of the season due to concerts, and their frustrations were exacerbated when the draw had to be redone at the 11th hour after Western United pulled out.
The clubs, whose annual distributions were slashed to $530,000 last year, are eager to hear of the outcome of the APL’s negotiations with broadcasters, given the existing deal with Paramount and Channel 10 expires at the end of this season. But despite belt-tightening remaining a priority for clubs and the APL, the potential of the league remains compelling for many. The investment in Melbourne Victory by Tony Bloom, owner of English Premier League club Brighton, is set to bring about a new era for one of the A-Leagues’ original clubs. At times during its 21 years, the promise of the ALM has overshadowed its present. But on Saturday night, there will be no fictional creatures running out on to the turf at AAMI Park.
Rather, there will be skilful fringe Socceroo Denis Genreau, a Victory signing brought back to Melbourne from Europe. Up against him will be Lachlan Brook, Auckland’s promising winger back in the ALM after a stint in the US, and who was Western Sydney’s top scorer in 2023-24. Heightened by the noise of Victory’s passionate fans, there will be genuine rivalry, given what happened between the sides last season. And with World Cup aspirants having more motivation than ever, those present will know: the A-Leagues are back.