Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP
In the end, it was a rather nondescript way for Melbourne City to make history. Able to secure the A-League Men premiership for a record-setting third straight season by defeating Central Coast on Saturday, Rado Vidošić’s side was forced to settle for a 1-1 draw, only to then have the crown fall into their laps a day later when Western United upset Adelaide, making City’s eight-point lead atop the table an unassailable one.
It meant there were no scenes of jubilationat the final whistle or confetti cascading around a joyous Scott Jamieson lifting the premiers’ plate. That will have to wait until this week, City’s captain instead having to make do with tweeting a celebratory Kobe Bryant gif. History made, but quietly.
No team in the 18 years of ALM has ever ended the regular season atop the mountain in back-to-back-to-back years. The feat has only ever been accomplished once before in Australian men’s national league history, when Sydney City won three straight between 1980 and 1982 in the National Soccer League. It is one of the greatest feats of consistent excellence in Australian football history.
City’s 14 wins this season equals their 2021-22 campaign, with two more opportunities to better their best-ever total of 15 from 2020-21. Defeated just three times, they are guaranteed to record the fewest defeats in a single season in club history. Their 55 goals scored stands alongside their total from 2021-22 and is just two adrift of the campaign prior. Shipping 29 goals the other way, they can afford to concede at least three in looming clashes with Western United and Western Sydney before they exceed the club record of 32 set in 2018-19 and 2020-21.
City are putting together one of the best-ever ALM seasons in both a statistical and narrative sense. Somehow they are improved on 2021 and ‘22 despite being forced to adapt to a mid-season coaching change from Patrick Kisnorbo to Vidošić, Jamie Maclaren’s imminent fourth-straight Golden Boot, Mat Leckie looking like the best player in the league, or the soon-to-be off-to-Europe Marco Tilio, Jordan Bos, and Aiden O’Neill establishing themselves as Socceroos.
At the same time, City’s run to a third-straight crown feels the least remarkable of the three, despite it being anything but. The most obvious contributor is that the league as a whole has been starved of coverage of late and that when column inches have been devoted, it’s been to more salacious subjects.
City’s recent stumbles and Adelaide’s 12-game unbeaten run provided the League with something approaching a horse race. It’s no fun to just write and talk about City relentlessly marching towards yet another trophy: you want a contest, a loveable underdog to City’s all-conquering, CFG-backed behemoth. The Reds offered that with their combination of a pumping Hindmarsh Stadium, young local talent, and Socceroos’ hero Craig Goodwin creating an environment where, as a neutral, you wanted them to succeed.
Conversely, once you get past them playing the best football in the League, there’s very little in this City side to engender them to all but the most front-running of neutrals. This is the best team in the A-Leagues: well-credentialed Australian veterans supplemented by a well-funded academy pumping out prospect after prospect, and a global scouting and recruitment network finding gems their rivals couldn’t. Buoyed by CFG resources, topping the ALM table is a base expectation.
City is expected to win. As its Manchester-based cousin looks to complete club football in Europe, with all the existential questions that raises, the Melbourne outpost of the CFG continues to march towards a similar model on an Australian scale. It’s why the thought of City not doing so is a novelty and, as cynical as the outlook is, how it curses moments such as a third-straight premiership to not carry the same impact as it would for other sides. In a way, it’s the ultimate compliment you can give City: the presupposition that they will win any game they play.
Now, the coming finals series presents a new challenge. City has been to three-straight grand finals but has only lifted the trophy once. As long as Australia crowns its champions via an end-of-season playoff, this will hamper legacy.
But the comparison between Melbourne and Manchester is where the next real frontier lies: the continent. Hampered by COVID, City has only once had a chance to compete in the Asian Champions League and, in that hub-based campaign, they failed to progress from their group. With Australian history made, Asia looms over any legacy in Melbourne, much as the UEFA Champions League serves as the elephant in the room whenever talking about Manchester.
