How do you top a season for the ages, one capped off with a Grand Final triumph that is likely to stand in the record books for perhaps decades to come?
If you are Melbourne Victory you plan meticulously, recruit wisely, strengthen in key areas, and trust that you enjoy the same luck with suspensions and injuries.
The contrast between the kick off in the A-League III and II could not be greater for Ernie Merrick’s team. Last August they went into their opening game against 2005-06 Premiers Adelaide as the worst credentialed Australian side in the competition having finished with only the hopeless NZ Knights below them in their debut campaign.
This season they get under way in Wellington against league new boys the Phoenix as the hunted Premiers and Champions. To say that all seven other clubs will be gunning for them is an understatement.
Last season Victory began training in April, months before their opponents. While some scoffed that they would be jaded by November, Ernie Merrick and his team of sports scientists at the Victorian Institute of Sport knew better, and their commitment to periodic training and peaking and tapering showed the rest of the league how it could be done. As Victory skipper Kevin Muscat points out, ‘‘Funny now how all the other teams have started training really early too, isn’t it?’’ Victory have not begun as early this season – most players did not get in until the first week in May – but that is not a slackening off, more a recognition of the fact that they will be engaged in the Asian Champions League from March to May. Last month Merrick commented during a light training session that “we know what our training sessions will be in a year’s time”.
If the training and planning regime is pretty similar to last year, the personnel is certainly different.
Despite the ease of Victory’s championship triumph – they only lost four games in the home and away season and smashed six past Adelaide in the Grand Final – Merrick has rung the changes, shedding several players and recruiting a couple of high profile additions.
Gone are the “trio from Rio’’, the exotic Brazilian imports who did so much to help market the club in the early weeks of season two. Claudinho was given his marching orders before Christmas, while Fred – many people’s player of the season – could not resist the lure of the Yankee dollar and opted to quit for a move to the US’s Major League, where he is now playing for DC United. Alessandro, the wildly unpredictable left wing-back spurned a new contract offer and the club finally lost patience, telling him if he could not make up his mind they could, and that he was no longer required. Also jettisoned were original Victory players Michael Ferrante, Vince Lia and Mark Byrnes. The first two have found new homes in New Zealand, where they will be desperate to put one over against their former employers in round one. James Robinson, the English import who came off the bench in the sudden death semi-final against Adelaide to score the last gasp winner which ensured that Victory would host the Grand Final has also been shown the door.
Simon Storey, the first choice right-back all year bucked the trend by quitting the club on his own terms to go travelling in Europe for a year.
But if anything Victory has strengthened in the off season. The capture of sometime Socceroo defender Ljubo Milicivic is a huge plus. Milicivic is, at 26, at the peak of his powers and has returned from Europe to play in the A-League believing he can advance his Socceroo credentials just as much playing here in front of Graham Arnold as he could in Switzerland. Wing-back Joseph Keenan comes with impeccable credentials, having been part of the Chelsea system for close to a decade after joining the Blues as a 14-year-old. Recruited from Dutch Eredivisie side Willem II, Keenan will provide rebound from defence down the left, while another new signing, Matthew Kemp (ex-Adelaide) will do something similar down the right.
Victory will, once again, be the benchmark in 2007-08.
Michael Lynch is chief football writer at the Melbourne Age
If you are Melbourne Victory you plan meticulously, recruit wisely, strengthen in key areas, and trust that you enjoy the same luck with suspensions and injuries.
The contrast between the kick off in the A-League III and II could not be greater for Ernie Merrick’s team. Last August they went into their opening game against 2005-06 Premiers Adelaide as the worst credentialed Australian side in the competition having finished with only the hopeless NZ Knights below them in their debut campaign.
This season they get under way in Wellington against league new boys the Phoenix as the hunted Premiers and Champions. To say that all seven other clubs will be gunning for them is an understatement.
Last season Victory began training in April, months before their opponents. While some scoffed that they would be jaded by November, Ernie Merrick and his team of sports scientists at the Victorian Institute of Sport knew better, and their commitment to periodic training and peaking and tapering showed the rest of the league how it could be done. As Victory skipper Kevin Muscat points out, ‘‘Funny now how all the other teams have started training really early too, isn’t it?’’ Victory have not begun as early this season – most players did not get in until the first week in May – but that is not a slackening off, more a recognition of the fact that they will be engaged in the Asian Champions League from March to May. Last month Merrick commented during a light training session that “we know what our training sessions will be in a year’s time”.
If the training and planning regime is pretty similar to last year, the personnel is certainly different.
Despite the ease of Victory’s championship triumph – they only lost four games in the home and away season and smashed six past Adelaide in the Grand Final – Merrick has rung the changes, shedding several players and recruiting a couple of high profile additions.
Gone are the “trio from Rio’’, the exotic Brazilian imports who did so much to help market the club in the early weeks of season two. Claudinho was given his marching orders before Christmas, while Fred – many people’s player of the season – could not resist the lure of the Yankee dollar and opted to quit for a move to the US’s Major League, where he is now playing for DC United. Alessandro, the wildly unpredictable left wing-back spurned a new contract offer and the club finally lost patience, telling him if he could not make up his mind they could, and that he was no longer required. Also jettisoned were original Victory players Michael Ferrante, Vince Lia and Mark Byrnes. The first two have found new homes in New Zealand, where they will be desperate to put one over against their former employers in round one. James Robinson, the English import who came off the bench in the sudden death semi-final against Adelaide to score the last gasp winner which ensured that Victory would host the Grand Final has also been shown the door.
Simon Storey, the first choice right-back all year bucked the trend by quitting the club on his own terms to go travelling in Europe for a year.
But if anything Victory has strengthened in the off season. The capture of sometime Socceroo defender Ljubo Milicivic is a huge plus. Milicivic is, at 26, at the peak of his powers and has returned from Europe to play in the A-League believing he can advance his Socceroo credentials just as much playing here in front of Graham Arnold as he could in Switzerland. Wing-back Joseph Keenan comes with impeccable credentials, having been part of the Chelsea system for close to a decade after joining the Blues as a 14-year-old. Recruited from Dutch Eredivisie side Willem II, Keenan will provide rebound from defence down the left, while another new signing, Matthew Kemp (ex-Adelaide) will do something similar down the right.
Victory will, once again, be the benchmark in 2007-08.
Michael Lynch is chief football writer at the Melbourne Age
