South Melbourne FC

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South Melbourne FC
Club logo
Basic data
Surname South Melbourne Football Club
Seat South Melbourne
founding 1959
Website smfc.com.au
First soccer team
Venue Lakeside Stadium
Places 15,000
league Victorian Premier League
2011 4th Place
home
Away

The South Melbourne FC is an Australian football club from South Melbourne , the district south of the center of Melbourne . The club won four Australian championships in the 1980s and 1990s and took part in the Club World Cup in Brazil in 2000 as the winner of the Oceania Club Championship .

history

The club was formed in late 1959 from the merger of the two local clubs Hellenic and Yarra Park Aias , both of which were founded in the early years of the decade. Since the newly created club had no playing area available, he entered into a connection with South Melbourne United , whose sports grounds were in Middle Park near the current square. The existence of this association can be documented for the first time in 1933. The driving force behind the merger of these three clubs was the then president of Hellenic , Theo Marmaras, who held the presidency of South Melbourne Hellas until 1972.

The club, which is particularly anchored in the population of Greek descent, started in 1960 in the First Division North and rose as a champion immediately in the Victorian State League . The club won the national championship for the first time in 1962 and was able to repeat this success six times in the following 15 years (1964, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1974, 1976). In 1977, the National Soccer League created a national Australian league for the first time, for which South Melbourne was qualified as one of four teams from Victoria.

The club initially had problems establishing itself in the new division and ended the 1979 season as bottom of the table. In the following seasons you could establish yourself in the top group and won in 1984 after first place in the regular season, the play-off round and thus the first Australian championship. This success could only be repeated in the 1990s.

In 1989, the former Hungarian world-class footballer Ferenc Puskás was hired as a coach, who in his second year as head coach led Melbourne to the second national championship in 1991. In 1996, the club had to change its name as the league officials tried to increase the interest of the general population in the sport by removing national names from club names. The new name South Melbourne Lakers did not meet with enthusiasm either with the fans or the US basketball team of the LA Lakers and so it was decided a short time later to simply call itself South Melbourne Soccer Club .

Former South Melbourne player Ange Postecoglou led the club as a coach to two more championships in 1998 and 1999, the last two national titles before the dissolution of the NSL in 2004. The subsequent victory in the Oceania Club Championship in 1999 qualified for the 2000 FIFA Club World Cup in Brazil. There, the team lost in the three group games Manchester United , Necaxa and CR Vasco da Gama with two goals difference each.

After the discontinuation of the national league, the club returned in 2005 under the name South Melbourne Football Club in the Victorian Premier League and won the seventh championship in this division in 2006 after a season of restructuring.

For the 2010/11 season, South Melbourne applied for a free second A-League license, alongside the established Melbourne Victory . Competitors were multimillionaire and former vice president of the Australian Rules football clubs is Carlton FC Colin DeLutis, and the businessman and horse breeder Peter Sidwell, whose Melbourne Heart finally got the contract for the A-League license. South Melbourne continues to play in the Victorian Premier League.

Stadion

Lakeside Stadium in 2008 before renovation

South Melbourne plays in Lakeside Stadium in Albert Park by the there since 1996 discharged Australian Grand Prix of Formula 1 is known. The origins of the stadium go back to 1878. For many decades it was the home ground of the Australian rules football club South Melbourne FC , which moved to sydney in the early 1980s and has since been known as the Sydney Swans . In the 1930s, 41,000 spectators once came to an Australian football game between South Melbourne and Carlton. The stadium, which was in the meantime quite shabby, was named after a car tire dealer Bob Jane Stadium in 1995 and held around 18,000 spectators in that era. From around 2010, the stadium was practically rebuilt at taxpayer expense and now also serves as Melbourne's premier athletics stadium. The grass pitch, which is now surrounded by a deep blue, eight to ten-lane running track that meets the IAAF requirements, now meets the strictest FIFA standards. The wide oval can currently hold up to around 15,000 spectators, of which around 7,000 are seated.

Trainer

player

Damian Mori , the record scorer in the Australian top division football and national team, who in 1997 also played six goalless games in the German Bundesliga, began his career at South Melbourne. Branko Buljevic, Jack Reilly, Peter Ollerton and Jimmy Mackay, all participants in the 1974 World Cup in Germany, also played for the club once. The tough former national team captain Kevin Muscat spent a few years at South Melbourne in the early 1990s, and from there he embarked on his almost decade-long career in England.

In 2002 South Melbourne FC took stock of 42 years of existence and announced their Team of the Century, the "Team of the Century". This was finally immortalized by the Sydney painter Dave Thomas in the style of Australian beer advertising of the 1930s in an oil painting that now adorns the club headquarters.

Eleven of the Century

Substitute bench

Trainer

successes

  • Oceania Club Championship: 1999
  • Master of the NSL: 1984, 1990/91, 1997/98, 1998/99
  • NSL Cup winner: 1989/90, 1995/96
  • Victorian Premier League (or State League) champions: 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1974, 1976, 2006

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