On behalf of everyone at Melbourne Victory Football Club, welcome to the 2026/27 A-Leagues season.
The wait is nearly over for our Men’s and Women’s teams to resume top-flight competition, and we are looking forward to our away openers against both the Wellington Phoenix and the Western Sydney Wanderers before we host Melbourne City and Newcastle Jets at AAMI Park in Matchweeks 2 and 3.
We recognise that the off-season, even with a FIFA Men’s World Cup in the middle of it, where Victory alumni were represented on and off the field, feels lengthy for supporters, but the work each of our professional teams has put in over this period will hold us in good stead for the season.
A-League Men’s
Our hard work in the A-League Men’s program started in June, with the appointment of Giovanni Savarese as A-League Men’s Head Coach. Giovanni is an individual who brings immense coaching acumen and an acute understanding of leading in an environment where football sits in an established pecking order for eyeballs.
Giovanni has continued to work alongside our 2025/26 Assistant Coach, Andrew Durante, along with the newly appointed Men’s Goalkeeper Coach, and former Victory, Borussia Dortmund, VfB Stuttgart and Nagoya Grampus player Mitchell Langerak.
This group have worked over the pre-season to balance preparations for the A-League alongside the AFC Champions League Two campaign and progression in the Hahn Australia Cup. They have done that with your support, both interstate and overseas, and we reserve a special thank you to those who have made the tremendous effort to offer travelling support to our Boys in Blue.
Saturday night, the stage was set for a wonderful start to Giovanni’s leadership at the Club, but more importantly, the chance to start the season with a trophy. While it was a wonderful spectacle for football, there is no denying that the result was bitterly disappointing. We saw the colour you brought and heard the support you delivered; the whole of Australian football did. Not giving you a trophy to celebrate, rewarding your support throughout the Cup run, is certainly frustrating and not reflective of where the Club wants and expects to be.
That said, unlike losing out at the pointy end of the A-Leagues season, we now have an opportunity to move forward immediately, and it was pleasing to see the boys bounce back with a strong win against FC Seoul in our second ACL Two match week before we kick off the new A-Leagues season this weekend.
While we cannot afford to let any disappointment linger, together, we learn from last weekend, and must use it as fuel to produce better results as we move through the season. We have immense confidence in the football group, staff and players, and believe the performances to this point are forming evidence of what can be achieved together in the months ahead.
The Club has added experienced defenders from Europe with top-level experience, including new Vice Captain’s Tom Lockyer and Philipp Ziereis, who will support our newly appointed Captain, Jason Davidson, along with young Australian full-backs Harry Shillington and Franco Lino, again on loan. We have also added valuable A-League know-how in Premiership and Championship winner Guillermo May and striker Harry Sawyer.
These boys have integrated into the existing playing group, which itself was bolstered by contract extensions for Jack Duncan, Brendan Hamill, Charles Nduka and Jack Warshawsky.
Each of these decisions was subject to our expansive recruitment process, a process that is further uplifted by Jamestown Analytics, of whom we are the exclusive football partner in Australia and New Zealand.
We also focused on developing our pathways, Academy and senior talent, which included Socceroo cap 645 Nishan Velupillay, who departed the Club for Europe after seven years. Nish was a fantastic ambassador for Victory on and off the field, a boyhood fan who developed into a leader within the playing group, and is the latest case study of our player pathway.
His story will inspire future cohorts of Academy players and offers live evidence of what is possible for our young players, four of which – Mikey Ghossaini, William Kengni, Jack Mihailidis and Malik Olukhale – we were delighted to see sign A-League contracts in July.
Each has not only been training with the A-League Men’s team but has contributed to the tremendous effort of our NPL side in 2026. Led by Senior Academy Head Coach, Besart Berisha, one of the youngest teams fielded by the Club in the competition were just a penalty shootout away from promotion.
The game we all love can be cruel sometimes, but Besart is attacking his coaching career just as he played, and is already on the front foot in preparation for next year.
We wish Giovanni and the team all the best for the 2026/27 season.
A-League Women’s
In the Women’s space, there was a great period of achievement and development in our maiden NPLW season for 2026. The U20s were crowned Champions, and the senior side remained competitive throughout their campaign, notably completing a league double over Melbourne City.
Our introduction to this competition strengthens the pathway to our A-League Women’s team, and many of the players and staff have been a part of important preparations for the 2026/27 season, and we have seen Leyla Hussein, Chloe McKenzie, Poppy O’Keeffe, and Sienna Techera each promoted to Scholarship Contracts.
Bella Santilli, who played a leading role from the sidelines in securing the NPLW Under 20 Championship, will work closely with Head Coach, Jeff Hopkins, and newly-appointed Senior Assistant Coach, Harley Hamdani. Additionally, Gareth Turnbull has returned to the ALW staff, Blerton Belica is our new Goalkeeper Coach, and Rebecca Berry, the inaugural recipient of the Maria Berry AM Coaching Scholarship, is also registered to the coaching set-up.
This ensures a collaborative group of experienced and emerging talent that is empowered to challenge one another for the benefit of the team and its ability to get results for you.
The A-league playing squad has also been strengthened. Victory Championship winner Angie Beard has rejoined, along with Julie Dolan Medallist Sophie Harding, Philippines international Skye Leach, Swiss national Anna Sutter, Young Matilda Alicia Woods, and Ayana Aoyagi, who bolsters the goalkeeping ranks.
These additions have been carefully coordinated with key player retention and new contracts for Claudia Bunge, Chelsea Blissett, Nicki Flannery, Zoe McMeeken and recent Matildas call-up Courtney Newbon.
Aligned to Member feedback, these players will be part of more home double-header fixtures this season, a clear example of our commitment to listen and activate change. The first of these comes soon, on Sunday, November 1.
Good luck to Jeff, who led the Ninja A-League All Stars team in the off-season, which included Kayla Morrison, Claudia Bunge and Courtney Newbon, during the off-season and to everyone working to bring success for our Women’s program.
Both our A-League Women’s and A-League Men’s campaigns will be bolstered by your amazing support.
That is not a hope, but a reality that is one of the privileges of being a part of the Victory family.
Our members and fans
More than 20,000 memberships have been issued for the season, and we expect this number to keep climbing healthily in the coming weeks. Thank you for pledging your support and thank you for committing to turn up and bring the colour and noise each week. There is no doubt that our members and fans have an impact on how we play, and we are in this together!
While we are always focused on trophies and football successes, we cannot forget that we have a vision to lead, unite, connect and inspire, and to engage our members and fans in accordance with our Fan Engagement Strategy.
We know results on the field help. We know you want to see winning football. We can all agree on that. But the Club is more than the 90 minutes, and we want to keep you connected to Victory when we are not playing or our matches are outside Victoria.
Over recent weeks and months, we have hosted the Member and Fan Workshops, continued our Member Working Group meetings and hosted our Annual Member Forum. In varying settings and structures, each invites different voices to have their say and hear directly from key figures at the Club, but share the same thread of communicative, two-way dialogue.
Much of this focuses on fan experience at AAMI Park and The Home of the Matildas, and we continue to push conversations, based on your feedback, to improve this.
Further updates
Further aligned to our vision, the Club was proud to be a co-creator, along with Professional Footballers Australia, of the Home is Football: Belonging in Australian Soccer exhibition. Hosted at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne’s CBD, the exhibition is running until the new year, with Victory members emailed a two-for-one Immigration Museum ticket offer. The exhibition celebrates the world’s game, its unrivalled power to bring people together, and its champions on and off the pitch.
This brief aptly brings us to a key piece of off-season activity – World Cup winner and reigning Johnny Warren medallist Juan Mata taking an ownership interest in the Club.
Juan dazzled as a player last season, and his receipt of the 2026 Victory Medal was unanimously regarded as deserved beyond debate. Further to this, his behaviours, professionalism and emotional intelligence left an indelible mark on Victory, the A-League and football in this country.
His shareholding in the Club engages him for the long term, and he will chair a newly established football committee for Melbourne Victory. We will all see him in Melbourne soon and look forward to working together once more.
For now, though, our immediate focus is on Matchweek 1 and making a winning start. Please know that wherever you are supporting from, it matters and we all feel it – thank you!
Go Victory!
Chairman, John Dovaston
Managing Director, Caroline Carnegie
