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Culina turns 50 on Monday and believes the World Cup winner is in better shape now than when he arrived. While the starting side will not be finalised until Friday, the match is set to mark Juninho’s return to A-League football.

Juninho himself has pushed his case forward for a recall to the starting side and was disappointed not to play last weekend against Queensland Roar. At training today, the Brazilian took part in the full session, running freely and competing for the ball with no hesitation.

“I expected to be back a week earlier,” said Juninho. “There’s still a little bit of pain and I’ll probably feel it for a while, but it doesn’t bother me.

"I need to re-start the match fitness now but it won’t be a problem. I’m much better now than when I played my first game.”

Culina added: “He’s moved in the last week or so a lot better than in the first two weeks. Whilst he’s had an injury he’s still kept himself pretty fit and done a fair amount of work.”

With crowds at Sydney Football Stadium dwindling, Culina says he is well aware that his team must win their first home match to rescue their season and bring the crowd averages back up.

“We’ve had a pretty ordinary start at home so it’s about time we started winning,” said Culina.

“If we can just re-produce the performance from last week… it was a real gutsy performance with discipline - so I think we should go into this round fairly confident.

“The supporters have been fantastic considering what we’ve put them through. The Cove have been absolutely superb so let’s hope that by turning things around we can start bringing supporters back to watch Sydney FC.

“This city deserves to have a team that is capable of bringing in 20-odd thousand people to a game. That’s our aim, we’ve got a job to do on the park and that will go a long way to bringing people back.”

Captain Tony Popovic also said that the team feels that last week’s win over Queensland has lifted the ‘monkey off their back’. He said: “It’s been a great week at training. You can see that everyone’s buzzing around and everyone is enjoying their work a bit more.

“To get that first win out of the way was something we needed and the boys put on a great performance last week and hopefully we can follow that up now.”

While Sydney will again be without Jacob Timpano and Robbie Middleby, the match will be the first opportunity for Sydneysiders to watch the former European Golden Boot winner Mario Jardel firsthand. Jardel is unlikely to start the match for the Jets but is tipped to be deployed from the bench.

Juninho is looking forward to playing his old national team mate saying: “We’ve spoken a few times this week. It’s always nice to play against quality Brazilian players. He’s one of those and I hope he can play, but I don’t hope he’ll score...

“He’s always dangerous in the air and if you give him an opportunity he will score. If he’s on the ground he’ll need some attention.”

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