MELBOURNE, Australia — In a moment of serendipity that wouldn’t become apparent until almost two months later, one of the first stops that new Melbourne Victory men’s boss Giovanni Savarese made in Australia was Lakeside Stadium. Arriving Down Under after agreeing to become the 11th permanent coach in the A-League Men giants’ history and watching them dispatch Tasmanian side Kingborough Lions in their opening Australia Cup fixture, the Venezuelan headed to Albert Park to get a look at Victory’s Original Rivalry foes, Adelaide United, who were opening their cup campaign away to South Melbourne.
And beyond the football — his view was that South Melbourne’s 2-1 “cupset” of the Reds was a fair result — one thing that struck the coach was the ambience of it all. Not just the spectacular lakefront location (he’s in for a treat when he plays the Central Coast Mariners), but also the celebrations of Hellas in the stadium; the Greek flags in the stands, the tales of the players and coaches that have passed through the club, and the story of the club’s 68-year history that dot the walls. It transported him to his teenage years, in collegiate offseasons in Long Island, New York.
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“It took me back to when I was 19-years-old, and I was in New York, and I played for the Greek Americans [Greek American Atlas Astoria],” Savarese reflected. “It reminded me of the history and the tradition of other cultures that come to a country. Seeing all the Greek flags and the people there. In a stadium that is in a location that is insane — how perfect that location is is unbelievable. And then hearing from my staff and other people, the amount of people that have played for that club and the history and the coaches that have been there in the past-it was great to go and watch the game.”
We now know that Savarese is going to get another, albeit much more hostile, look at those fans on Oct. 10, when Victory face South Melbourne in the final of the Australia Cup, likely at AAMI Park. It’s a huge game, not just because silverware and a spot in next year’s Asian Champions League Two will be on the line, but because it’s a fixture dripping with narrative: the two biggest rivals in Australian football to have never played in a competitive fixture, finally locking horns.
On one side stands Victory, standard-bearers of the A-League and either the biggest or second-biggest club in the country, depending on how successful they are in arguing with Sydney FC. In the other corner is South Melbourne, historic powers banished from the Australian top-flight two decades ago, but who have never stopped advocating for their return, with their latest attempt by way of assuming collapsed Western United’s licence, building up a head of momentum.
Fortunately, Savarese knows the importance of a good storyline. Over the past couple of decades, the new Victory boss has oft found himself juggling a whistle with a microphone, providing analysis of Major League Soccer — first with ESPN and then Apple TV. His role in the media, in fact, continued right up until he signed his contract at Victory, inking the deal in Miami while working for radio broadcaster Fútbol de Primera during the FIFA World Cup. But throughout his time away from it, the dugout, albeit the right dugout, remained where he wanted to be.
“I was a commentator, but I was a coach,” he said. “I was looking for the right adventure, the right club for me to be able to be part of. And there were some opportunities. There were some situations I felt that maybe were not the right ones. Some that I felt maybe were interesting, but maybe didn’t end up working out the way I thought.
“But you always get to the right place when that time is right. This felt like it was the right club for me to be part of. I was in Italy and visiting my mother, and I received the phone call that the club was interested in initiating conversations. We did all of our interview process in Italy. And during the time that I was there, we connected a few times. Then when I went back to New York, we started talking about the staff and everybody else. And everything from both sides felt right.”
Savarese, 55, was announced as Victory’s new coach in June, the latest tasked with ending the club’s increasingly long wait for league silverware. He steps in after the club opted not to renew the contract of Arthur Diles, who has since landed as coach of Vietnamese outfit Cong An Ho Chi Minh City FC. Diles had led Victory to the 2024-25 Grand Final, but fell short against rivals Melbourne City, meaning that Victory’s wait for an A-League Men trophy will hit eight years in 2026-27 — an interminable period for a club that had won four titles and three premierships between 2005 and 2018 and built an identity around this consistent success.
Five permanent coaches and seven overall have been employed since Kevin Muscat delivered the “Heist in the Hunter” in 2018, and while now-Socceroos boss Tony Popovic did provide an Australia Cup in his first season, Victory watched on as local foes City and now-defunct Western United both won titles (the former also winning three straight premierships) in the intervening period. Another Cup win against South Melbourne would be a momentous achievement, no doubt, and after benefiting from Heidelberg United being ruled ineligible, they’ve also got an Asian Champions League Two campaign to play for. But that A-League record increasingly looms.
“In all the places that I’ve been, I want to win,” Savarese explained, sitting in the clubrooms of La Trobe University Soccer Club, adjacent to the fields Victory have been training on while works are performed on their regular pitches at Gosch’s Paddock.
“I want to be part of winning teams. But you have to start with the small goals first. We need to be better. We need to be a team that understands the style of play we want to play. We need to win every practice; we’re strong every practice.”
At the time of Victory’s 2018 title, Savarese was leading the Portland Timbers to a Western Conference title and the 2018 MLS Cup, where they fell 2-0 to Atlanta United FC. It was a feat he would match three years later when the Timbers lost to New York City FC on penalties in the 2021 MLS decider. He’d arrived in the Pacific Northwest after spending five years at the helm of the second incarnation of the historic New York Cosmos, when they re-launched in the North American Soccer League.
A 30-time Venezuela international who calls New York home, Savarese first touched down in the United States as a 19-year-old and was advised by friend Cheche Vidal to pursue a collegiate scholarship. Despite not speaking English, he secured a place at LIU Brooklyn and went on to have a standout season with the Long Island Rough Riders of the United States Interregional Soccer League, leading to his acquisition by the MetroStars in the first-ever MLS draft. A long career in the U.S. followed, also featuring stints in Italy and England, before he moved into coaching.
The child of Italian immigrants, the attacker debuted as a 15-year-old for Caracas-based side Deportivo Italia and grew up watching Serie A every Sunday, idolising Gianluca Vialli and the great Sampdoria sides. Remarking on some of the similarities between Melbourne and sections of cities such as New York and Boston, he’s also noted the influence that migrant communities such as the Greeks and Croatians have made and continue to make on Australian football since he arrived.
“I think it was very important,” he said of his cosmopolitan footballing education. “I think it taught me culture. It allowed me to understand different parts of the world; we think differently in some ways, but we’re all the same in so many ways.”
Now at Victory, Savarese has found a club he feels fits him, his football, and his values. But while the official tagline of his new employers might reference uniting and inspiring through football, Victory’s real foundation is its mythology of winning, of being bigger and better than everyone else. And their new coach, starting with an Australia Cup final, will be expected to deliver on that sooner rather than later.
