As a club that prides itself on being the biggest and best in the land, Melbourne Victory came ever so close to delivering on the pitch last season. Beaten Grand Finalists in the Men’s and Women’s deciders, two points off the pace in the Women’s League campaign, runners up in the Australia Cup.
If one can find contentment in effort over outcome in the unpredictable world of professional sport, then Victory’s season would be satisfactory. But football is about winning trophies, and for club Director of Football John Didulica, those near-misses have stung right through the off-season.
That’s not to say they counted for nothing; ticking into a fifth year in the job, Didulica and Victory have faced challenges few would have foreseen. The 2022 Christmas Derby incident threatened the foundations of proud support on which the club was built, while managers came and went and crowds dropped. It might have had a humbling effect, for the rebuild on and off the pitch has been somewhat under the radar, compared to the club’s first decade on the scene.
‘I came to Victory off the back of two wooden spoons [in July, 2021], so we were coming from a long way back. To where we are now in making the last four Grand Finals – two with the men, one with the women, and the Australia Cup – I think we’re in a really good place as a club’, Didulica told Box2Box.
‘The club’s still got over 20,000 season ticket holders every year, so there’s a lot of people still emotionally connected. We still have a lot of work to do, not just us but the whole league, and I think everybody’s conscious of the broader challenges the league is facing but I think we can take those challenges on from a position of strength.’
After dodging the simmering disaster of its multi-club ownership farm, 777 Partners (which had provisions to acquire 70% of the club, but entered administration in October 2024), 2025 has also seen Victory shift hands to brighter, and certainly more stable ownership.
Brighton & Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom acquired a 19.1% stake in the club in March with provision for further; as far as football club ownership goes, it’s the equivalent of swapping a seat in a burning building for one on a white sand beach. Little else has been made public since, but Didulica was effusive that the impact is underway.
‘We speak with Tony regularly. I’m working in close connection with the analytics team out of Brighton, assessing both our players and what’s available on the global market for the men and women’ he said.
‘I think what gets lost sometimes with Victory is its a really deeply family-oriented club. Ninety percent of the club is owned by deep family connections to football: whether the Di Pietro family, Biasin family… These are all people that have been steeped in football for generations.
‘Tony fits into that cohort exceptionally well. He’s bought into his local club [Brighton], Victory was of interest to him because his wife is from Melbourne. He fits nicely with the sensibility of our ownership, and so far he’s been a model owner, supporting everybody and chipping in where he can.’
==================================================================================================
The history of the A-League reads that numerous factors in and around the Covid-19 era lead to an acceleration of decline. Mid-way through its six-year, $346million broadcast deal with Fox Sports – often considered the game’s financial high watermark – Football Australia would be forced into a reduced deal with Network 10, and shortly after cede control of the league to the clubs themselves and their representative body, the Australian Professional Leagues.
The slashing of club finance distributions from Football Australia to clubs, and lessened ability to attract big name players of yore, all subsequently filtered down into forcing clubs to look inwards. The development and sale of talent into foreign markets has become an essential revenue stream for battling clubs, where it had barely been a consideration for the A-League’s first fifteen years.
Victory are no different: while the budget no longer allows for Keisuke Honda or Ola Toivonen, there have been increased opportunities for the likes of Ryan Teague, Kasey Bos and Nishan Velupillay. The former pair have been sold overseas in the past month, while the latter will likely follow as he enters the final year of his contract.
The club form of Teague, Velupillay and Daniel Arzani saw all three called upon by Tony Popovic, a former Victory manager himself, during the Socceroos successful recent World Cup qualifying campaign. They marked a welcome increase in national representation for the club, following a decade lagging behind Melbourne City, Sydney FC and Adelaide United in that regard.
‘One thing that’s constant in Australian football is that it’s changing and shifting, and you need to be nimble to meet whatever challenges you’re up against. We’ve sold millions of dollars worth of players into Europe – not Asian markets, but European – over the past eighteen months which is the first time we’ve done that since Mitch Langerak (to Borussia Dortmund in 2010), which feels like a lifetime ago.
‘We’ve had three or four guys in full-strength Socceroos squads, young players like Alannah Murphy coming through our women’s academy into the Matildas. You’re seeing the tip of the iceberg: young players emerging and being ready for our national teams, and moving into big leagues in Europe.
‘That’s what we judge ourselves on internally. The convergence of those factors are something we’re really proud of, and I think a lot of A-League clubs are doing great work in bringing the best young people in, on and off the field.’
How to sell that new world order to those dormant fans, the proportion of the 20,000 season ticket holders that remember the club and league in its pomp but have dropped away, and don’t see team sheets of the calibre they fondly recall?
Victory sold star right-back Jason Geria to Japan midway through last season when they were in the thick of competition; for fans who’d found attachment in Victory’s recent run,, there will be a considerable few who’d turned up to watch Daniel Arzani, and will now be disappointed that he too has been sold abroad.
‘Our reality is authentically aligned with how 99% of clubs around the world operate. It’s not some huge seachange, but probably the A-League coming back to its natural setting, which is building an exciting league full of young local players that can be moved to higher leagues in Europe and elsewhere.
‘It’s the same story whether you’re Melbourne Victory or Boca Juniors, Ajax, PSV, Ferencvaros; you can still be the biggest club in your market, while taking pride in moving players on to ‘bigger’ clubs.
‘We need to do it all. We need to be a team that challenges for trophies, but we also need to be moving players to Europe, and putting players in the national teams, and we’ve been doing that. Victory fans, I think, have always been pretty savvy football people, and I think they get that.’
==================================================================================================
Didulica’s long and varied life in Australian football has him strongly positioned to speak broadly. A playing career in the NSL cut short by injury opened out into long administration stints with Melbourne Heart and now Victory, as well as a four-year stint as chief executive of the PFA. A lawyer, he spent time at Football Australia, and is also the author of 2021 text Football Belongs.
For all the game’s failings, he’s adamant his optimism continues to renew. For example, while most people with hindsight have come to review the unbundling of the A-Leagues as a failure, he retains a level approach, and a belief that it could still come good.
‘The game itself is incredibly healthy. I think where we struggle at times is we haven’t perfected the professional architecture that sits atop or adjunct to that passion for football, and that’s what we need to unlock.
‘I think when we started the separation [unbundling] process we took some really good steps towards that, I genuinely think that was the right decision. I think there were a range of factors that hurt, Covid being a huge one.
‘Visibility is also a huge issue: making sure we’re in the public consciousness has probably slipped since covid, our ability to have the A-League as part of the normal discourse doesn’t happen as much as it did.
‘All leagues need to be a cooperative exercise, we need every club around Australia to be strong for the league to be at its best. At its best the A-League is still wonderful: the Grand Final was a great evening, and I was fortunate enough to be in Auckland for the semi-final and I can’t imagine there would have been too many other games around the world that would have matched that for drama and intensity.
‘We just need to make sure there are more highs than lows. I think what we’re good at in football is describing the problem, but now we’ve got to be positive and solutions focused, and less cynical about how we can address the future.’