Ante Milicic will attempt to finish his tenure at Macarthur FC on a high, eyeing victory over local rivals Western Sydney Wanderers in the Bulls' final game of the A-League Men season.
Milicic will depart at season's end and return to Croatia for family reasons, bringing to a close a lengthy career in Australian football as a player and coach.
After Macarthur's loss to Newcastle, the 48-year-old said he had no plans of coaching again in the near future as his tank was "empty" and on Friday stressed he didn't know how long a break he would need.
"I'm very comfortable with my decision," he told AAP.
"It's a combination of a lot of things. I just feel for myself now is the time to not be involved any further in the A-League. Maybe a different league, a different challenge, a different age group, maybe something might excite me.
"A few people close to me say 'after a month you'll be itching to get back into it'. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. It all depends on if something's presented or not.
"I don't like looking too far, particularly in this game. I know where I'm heading, where I need to get to. I'm looking forward to it.
"There's a lot of family reasons as well attached to this, it's not just one thing. But when you get to my age, you have priorities in life and you become a lot more wiser through your experiences.
"It's just time for me to finish hopefully this Sunday on the right note and then we'll just see what happens."
Macarthur are now out of the finals race but Milicic urged his players to finish their campaign professionally.
He believed they would struggle to field a full squad of 18 through injuries and illness.
"It hit me that's been the story of our season," he said.
"Once we got hit earlier in the season after that fifth game with sickness, now some of our players are even getting COVID for the second time, injuries.
"Then the players that are coming back, you can see that they're doing everything they can but they're just not at those levels that they once were.
"We've got a few that will be out injured, a few that will be out sick but it presents opportunities to others.
"There's no excuses, whoever takes the field on Sunday needs to put in the best possible performance both individually and collectively that we can get the right result."
