Melbourne Victory would like to congratulate the 35 players across our Academy and A-League Women’s (ALW) Pathway Program who have been selected to represent Victory in next month’s Emerging Matildas and Emerging Socceroos Championships.
Previously known as the National Youth Championships (NYC), the 2025 edition of both tournaments is the first since its rebranding by Football Australia (FA).
The Emerging Socceroos Championships will take place on home soil at The Home of the Matildas for the U15 and U16s boys age groups from 6–11 July.
A total of 31 players from Melbourne Victory’s Academy program have been named across the six respective squads representing Victoria at the Emerging Socceroos Championships.
- U15 Victoria Blue: Levi Buttigieg, Keigo Shimokawa, Orpheus Sidiroglou, Martin Watts.
- U15 Victoria Silver: Liam Alexopoulos, Jobe Davies, Jacob Kovacevic, Masood Mohammadi, Xavier Munaretti, Baxter Romanovski, Lucas Gelgec.
- U15 Victoria White: Eli Kaminski, Nicholas Koussoulas, Christian Lykopoulos, Ritchie Mahon, Dylan McAleer, Lucas Pitruzzello, Jordan Stavrou, Harper Zwiers.
- U16 Victoria Blue: Ethan Gemetzis, Liam Lancaster, Malik Olukhale, Mushahed Sawiz, Luca Thomas.
- U16 Victoria Silver: Ali Abili, Raphael Caligiuri, Anton Gray, Max Mihailidis, Anthony Suleman, Jude Tortosa.
- U16 Victoria White: Nikolas Didulica, Hasnain Jawad.
- U16 Northern Territory: Indie Thomas-Parker.
A further three players from the Club’s ALW Pathway Programs have been selected to represent Victoria at the Emerging Matildas Championships which take place in Sydney from 15-20 July.
- U15 Victoria White: April Tancin.
- U16 Victoria White: Anastazia Simic, Lucy Simic.
Part of the Team Victoria coaching staff is ALW Goalkeeper Coach Melissa Maizels, who will be providing Goalkeeper coaching for all four Victorian teams, and Reide Mulholland (U16 Victoria Blue assistant coach) who currently works within the Club’s ALW Pathways and Pre-Academy programs.
Melbourne Victory Director of Football John Didulica was delighted to see such strong club representation across all the respective Victorian state teams.
“We wish all of our players selected well and hopefully they will create some great memories while representing their state which is always a distinguished honour at this age level,” said Didulica.
Previous editions of the tournament have not only proved to be launching pads for players to represent Australia on the international stage but have proved as integral experiences for several footballers who have gone onto represent Melbourne Victory in the future such as Kasey Bos and Alana Murphy.
