Melbourne City’s dominance of the A-League gives their third-straight title an understated quality and means their legacy as one of Australia’s all-time great teams remains in progress
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, 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.
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’sCity’s recent stumbles and Adelaide’s 12-game unbeaten run provided the League with something approaching a horse race.
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.
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