By Vince Rugari
Let’s get the qualifiers out of the way early. And we’re not talking about the 12 games the Central Coast Mariners had to play and the 100,000 kilometres they had to endure in economy class to get here. The sobering reality is their AFC Cup triumph sounds more prestigious than it actually is.
Ten years ago, the Western Sydney Wanderers beat Al Hilal to win the 2014 AFC Champions League title, and that’s the real prize in Asian club football. Think of the AFC Cup as analogous to UEFA’s Europa League, but a step down even from that: there were no Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Saudi, Qatari, Thai or even Emirati clubs involved at all, and so there was always a good chance that if they could handle the travel burden, one of the Australian entrants had a real shot at winning it, largely due to baseline factors like player quality and professionalism. And so it has proved.
Having now rained on the parade to an appropriate degree, it is true that you can only beat what’s in front of you. And the Mariners have been doing an awful lot of that lately. Their 1-0 win over Lebanese side Al Ahed on Monday morning (AEST) in Muscat, Oman is a victory not just for themselves, but for the Aussie game.
As goalscorer Alou Kuol put it post-match: “I’m just very happy that I could do it for the team, the club, and Australian football.” Or captain Danny Vukovic: “We felt the love from obviously our fans, but fans of the other clubs as well. This is for everyone.”
The Mariners will bank $2.3 million in prizemoney from this achievement – crucial income for such a lean operation. They also get to bask in the knowledge their brand has been spread a little further around the world. But it’s a collective boon. Australia’s reputation in Asian and global football has been enhanced, ever so slightly. After a decade of disappointment on the continental stage, it proves to the rest of the AFC that the A-League still has a pulse.
It will also give a welcome and timely boost to Australia’s AFC coefficient, which dictates how many A-League clubs will compete at different levels of Asia’s club competitions. Next season, those competitions will be completely revamped: the AFC Cup will be replaced by a new-look “AFC Champions League 2” tournament, to sit beneath “AFC Champions League Elite”, which the Mariners have already qualified for. If they win that, like the Wanderers, the Mariners will be able to claim they have truly conquered Asia.
Central Coast Mariners en route to victory over Al Ahed in the AFC Cup final.Credit: AFC Photos
As a standalone achievement, this is good, but nothing super special. Not quite yet.
When you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, though, something quite remarkable begins to emerge.
The Mariners lost their first six competitive games of the 2023-24 season: an Australia Cup round-of-32 defeat to Sydney FC on penalties, their opening AFC Cup group stage match against Malaysian side Terengganu FC, and then the first four games of the A-League season proper. Since then, they have lost just two of their last 35 games in all competitions, sealing the A-League premiership last week on the final day of the season. In fact, they’ve played in more countries (eight) than they’ve suffered defeats (seven, if we’re not counting that loss on penalties) this term.
The AFC Cup makes it two trophies already. A third beckons, if they can get past Sydney FC in their two-legged A-League semi-final and then win the grand final on May 25. That won’t be easy, since they will land back in Australia midweek, and due to venue availability reasons, will be forced to back up on Friday night at Allianz Stadium. And those two most recent defeats were both suffered against Sydney FC, one at home and one away.
No team has ever won the A-League premiership, championship and an Asian trophy in the same season; indeed, the Mariners were just the third Aussie team to even make an AFC final, after the Wanderers and Adelaide United in 2008.
But if they do it, and become the first Australian team in history to win a continental treble? That would surely put them in the same conversation as Ange Postecoglou’s South Melbourne of the late 1990s, his “Roarcelona” of the early 2010s, and Graham Arnold’s near-invincibles at Sydney FC of 2016-17 as one of the greatest teams in Australian domestic soccer history.
This is a less dominant team than any of those sides, and their style of play is certainly not as eye-catching as some of them – but their intangible qualities stand out. They always seem to find a way. The country’s smallest professional club just keeps on dreaming big.
“Anything’s possible in the form we’re in,” said Kuol, whose 84th-minute strike through the legs of Al Ahed’s goalkeeper sealed the deal for the Mariners.
“Maybe we’re not playing the best football, but we’re always working for each other, grinding out results. And I reckon we can do it.”
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