Offseason Bits And Pieces

By: Marcus | April 29th, 2009

Its been two months since the Grand Final, it seems way longer, the scary part is there’s another 4 months to wait til the season gets back underway. It has seemed very quiet since the Grand Final, but there is some big things that have happened in The Big V’s off season so far. One of Melbourne’s big shareholders have pulled out, there’s a couple of signings and some preseason friendly arranged.

On the 24th of April it emerged that millionaire businessman Joe Mirabella wanted to withdraw his sponsorship of Victory as soon as possible in order to buy a stake in the new franchise, provisionally named Melbourne Heart. Mirabella has been a sponsor since our inception, to lose them will be sad and a blow, since we haven’t found a replacement for Samsung yet we are two big sponsors down, but in sure we will find some new ones soon, as we are the most successful Australian team. Mirabella’s reason for pulling out I found a bit bizarre, it was because the owner Joe wants to back the new Melbourne consortium. I mean I think the next two A-League teams will be Tasmania and possibly Canberra, I don’t think the “Hearts” will be given a license any time soon. Good luck to you Joe.

Ward Scores Winner

The Victory have picked up a new player and elevated a youngster, while re-signing two key players. The new kid on the block is Ex-Wellington custodian Glen Moss, he has been brought in as a back up and in case Theo leaves. Melbourne signed Young Socceroo and Victory Youth Medalist Mathew Theodore for one year. Theodore is a 19 year old, attacking midfielder, who captained Victory Youth in its first season and becomes the first player from the side to graduate to the seniors. Nicky Ward, Former QPR and Perth player has joined Celeski and Brebner in re-signed for two years, which is great news as he has been the key in the midfield and scores some crucial goals. While the biggest news which is yet to be confirmed, is Melbourne have allegedly paid LD Alajuelense $500,000 to acquire Carlos Hernandez permanently. The deal has been floating around the Costa Rican media for a week now and its also on his wiki, but Melbourne are yet to officially announce anything, I’ll will post as soon as they do!

In the last bit of big news is the Pre-Season Cup has been scrapped after clubs demanded more control over their preparations for the up-coming season. Designed to emulate the AFL’s Pre-Season Cup it never really got going and I’m glad its been binned because after all football is international sport, where AFL is only and will never be any more than a national sport. So it gives Aussie teams the chance to practice against foreign opponents which is exactly what Melbourne are doing as preparation for the season proper and ACL campaign. They will be facing Chinese Super League teams Guangzhou Pharmaceutical and Tianjin Teda in June. This will be great preparation for Melbourne as we will be grouped against one of four Chinese sides in the AFC Champions League 2010, will play Guangzhou at YueXiuShan Stadium on Friday, 5 June and Tianjin at TEDA Football Stadium two days later.

Stay safe and I’ll post as soon as some more news comes to hand!