The location has been kept under wraps to give the squad, and most particularly star signing Alessandro Del Piero, a chance to spend time with team mates away from the glare of cameras.

For skipper Terry McFlynn today will be - as it has been ever since he joined the Sky Blues - all about the team.

Alessandro, he says, is just one of the boys and as far as Sydney FC’s sole surviving foundation player is concerned, compliments don’t come much higher than that.

“This club has never been a one man club or a one man team,” McFlynn said. “We’ve had some fantastic players over the years, Dwight Yorke, Steve Corica, Juninho, Benito Carbone, Brett Emerton.

“The one thing that has remained a constant is the collective effort and that was Alessandro’s main message when he came into the dressing room.

"He wanted to be one of the boys and he wanted to do everything with the boys.”

Del Piero joins the leadership group after an offer by McFlynn to hand over the captaincy was nipped in the bud by coach Ian Crook. It’s the second time the defensive midfielder has made the offer to step down – the first following the arrival last season of Socceroo Brett Emerton.

But for a lad all the way from the tiny village of Swatragh, Northern Ireland, it was never a matter of taking the captaincy lightly. McFlynn, as fans will tell you, wears his heart right alongside the armband.

“I never asked to be the captain but it’s something that I cherish and something that I honour,” McFlynn said.

“It doesn’t matter to me which man picks up the trophy at the end of the season as long we’re the winners.

“Alessandro sees the culture of the club as very much a team effort and that’s fantastic for us because he is a world superstar.”

It’s a big season ahead for the hard-playing Sky Blues skipper in the final year of his current contract, and leading out a team many hope will turn around the off-field and on-field fortunes of the harbour city club.

But at 31 he faces the invariable life after football questions. Studying a Masters in Coach Education with aspirations to work in player development, he isn’t willing to speculate about the world beyond the 2012/13 campaign just yet.

There is enough to keep him occupied dealing with the banter brought by Crook’s injection of youth and pace into the Sky Blues line-up. As team-mates observed, promising young midfielder Hagi Gligor was only one when their captain was starting out in the game.

“It came home a little bit then that I had a few kilometres on the clock – there was a bit of a joke that some of my clothes were older than Hagi,” McFlynn laughed.

“Craig (Duncan) the fitness coach has actually said he’s going to get a calendar to time some of my runs instead of a stopwatch.”

But McFlynn is deadly serious about seeing Sydney FC return to its glory days when the stands of Allianz Stadium were packed with cheering fans.

Ever since that first season when The Cove unfurled a banner acknowledging the tragic death of his aunt and uncle in a car crash, there has only ever been one jersey for this player - and he hopes to be wearing it for some time to come.

“I’ve always said I’d only ever leave the club when they didn’t want me,” he said. “I’m thankful to this point they’ve always wanted to retain me. If things don’t work out and I have to move on, well, certainly I don’t see myself playing for anyone else.

“I’ve been a full-time footballer since the age of 15 – it’s all I know – so to say I’ll move into something else is probably unrealistic.

“Whether I retire and do something else – I’m not sure - I’m just focusing on trying to get as fit as I possibly can for the season ahead and hopefully we get to win something.

"I’ll let the future sort itself out when the time comes.”