Less than a week after signing an extension to his Matildas contract, Ante Milicic has been unveiled as the inaugural coach of A-League expansion club Macarthur FC.
The new club, based in south-west Sydney, will enter the competition in the 2020-21 season, meaning Milicic’s time in charge of the women’s national side will not extend beyond the 2020 Olympic Games.
Milicic last week announced that after leading the Matildas’ charge at this year’s World Cup, he will oversee their Olympic qualification campaign and, if successful, a tilt at gold the Games in Tokyo. “The timing was right for me,” Milicic said on Wednesday.
Previously a Socceroos assistant coach, 45-year-old Milicic believes his international experience, including World Cups, would stand him in good stead at the helm of an A-League team.
When it was voted into the A-League back in December, the bidding group was known as Macarthur South West Sydney, a nod to the names of two separate bidders, who ultimately joined forces.
Macarthur FC will play at a refurbished Campbelltown Stadium, with its training headquarters to be based at a centre of excellence which is being constructed.
The club said the new name was synonymous with the geographical region that bridges Sydney and rural New South Wales. It is a club that covers a geographic footprint involving two grassroots football associations and nine clubs. It’s colours will be black, white and ochre.
The logo will feature a bull and three stars of the Southern Cross to symbolise football’s links with the grassroots football community, the National Premier League and the A-League.
The Macarthur region has also been the childhood home of at least 20 Socceroos and 10 Matildas players with a combined games total of 600 for the Socceroos and 433 for the Matildas.
Five men and five women from the area have played in at least one World Cup, with Brett Emerton and Heather Garriock each having reached a century of national team appearances.
