South Melbourne and Melbourne Victory will meet in the Australia Cup final on Saturday at AAMI Park, with a capacity crowd of around 28,000 expected for a match laden with significance for Australian football. The fixture pits an NPL club with deep roots against an A-League Men club, and it has been framed as a meeting of old soccer and new football.
Melbourne Victory represents the new football: a keystone entity in the contentious reboot of Australia’s round ball game 21 years ago. It was a brand designed to bring together Melbourne’s sporting tribes, though the reality was something different. South Melbourne can trace its roots back to the 1950s, with a proud history including four titles in the now defunct National Soccer League. That history is intertwined with the pride and community of European post-war migration, and the club has delivered many of Australia’s football’s most meaningful days — or, as it seemed to some in recent decades, fading memories.
The final has also revealed the connections that run through the Australian game. Melbourne Victory captain Jason Davidson is a former Socceroos player whose father, Alan, spent his formative years at South before a distinguished career in Europe and at international level. “We all know the history of him at South Melbourne and what that means to him and to the Davidson family,” Davidson said on Friday. “So he’s super excited, as am I.”
Victory striker Harry Sawyer is a former South Melbourne player and lives 200 metres from the man he could be marked by on Saturday. South Melbourne captain Marco Janković is the son of former Real Madrid player Milan Janković, who emigrated to Queensland in the 1990s. Janković said he is close mates with Sawyer — who spent three years at South — and the build-up has been flush with banter. The friendly rivalry culminated in some light needling at the local supermarket when Janković saw the forward reach into the fridge. “He was going for the kombucha, so I was just making sure that he knows how that would settle in his stomach, it’s pretty close to the game,” Janković said with a smile.
Saturday’s match is a triumph of the Australia Cup concept, which has provided hope for state league optimists in its 12 years of existence but has never entered the broader national sporting consciousness until now. This will be the tournament’s best-attended final, even though one of its teams does not play in the A-Leagues. It is a hint of what might be possible in the future of the sport in Australia, as the game looks past the limitations of the A-Leagues to a pragmatic embrace of its broad church. And it is a reminder of why the sport matters the world over, and how identity cannot be divorced from football support.
The match also presents a realistic chance of an upset, thanks partly to a crowd expected to be split evenly between the clubs. NPL sides Sydney United 58 and Heidelberg have reached the final in the past, but neither lifted the trophy. Davidson said it will be the first time the Victory support will be challenged at a game in Melbourne. “That just shows you what a special and historical night tomorrow’s going to be, it’s amazing for Australian football,” he said.
Janković acknowledged that the experience of a full, modern stadium will be novel for the majority of his teammates. “There are only a couple players in our squad that have played [in front of] over probably 10,000 [fans],” he said. “In saying that, going away to Preston, going away to Heidelberg, places like these where the fence is one metre from the sideline and you’re getting yelled at by 10,000 people, that’s also not easy.”
South Melbourne’s cup run began with a victory over Adelaide United in the round of 32 in July, before they edged Fremantle City in a shootout. A late winner from Arran Cocks took them past traditional rivals Preston Lions in the quarter-final, a match in Melbourne’s northern suburbs that drew 6,673 — a figure above the average crowd for four A-League Men clubs last season. A deserved semi-final victory over Queensland Lions, that state’s NPL champions, set up Saturday’s clash. South Melbourne’s side is brimming with A-League-calibre talent, including Sebastian Pasquali, who has played for Melbourne Victory and Western United and had a youth stint at Dutch giants Ajax, and fellow midfielder Paulo Retre, the 33-year-old who has played more than 200 A-League games. Striker Bul Juach was the Victorian NPL’s golden boot for Heidelberg last year before switching to South Melbourne, and he scored a hat-trick in the semi-final against the Lions. Although South Melbourne lost in the semi-finals in the Victorian NPL this year, the bulk of the squad were good enough to win the Australian Championships last year.
Melbourne Victory needed penalties to get past Western Sydney Wanderers in the Australia Cup last 16, but did not concede against APIA Leichhardt in the quarter-final or Sydney FC in the semi-final. That victory against the Sky Blues partly made up for last season’s elimination final defeat, which marked the end of the reign of former coach Arthur Diles, who has been replaced by Venezuelan Giovanni Savarese. Newcastle Jets are the Australia Cup holders after beating Heidelberg United in last season’s final.
Victory are without Spanish World Cup winner Juan Mata this season after his decision not to return to the club he now part owns, but midfielder Denis Genreau is among the most talented players in the A-Leagues, and forward Guillermo May was signed in the off-season from Auckland. Defenders Philipp Ziereis and Tom Lockyer have arrived after long careers in Europe. The pedigree has not intimidated South Melbourne, however, and coach Sinisa Cohadzic and his captain appeared confident on Friday. The group is hardened from a long season and faces an opponent still in their long off-season.
Putting the result aside, Janković said the match will be special. “Seeing the amount of people that are posting and sending messages of support is incredible,” he said. “It’s shown not only what we’re doing now, but where we’re going in the future, where this club can go.”