Sydney FC faces crunch semi-final as vital off-season looms

The Premier’s Plate winner will have its hands full against Perth Glory in the A-League semi-final on Wednesday night.

Sydney FC’s Alexander Baumjohann, Adam Le Fondre and Kosta Barbarouses lead their team to the training pitch at Macquarie Uni. Picture: Getty Images

Sydney FC may have swept all before it in recent years on the field in the A-league, but suddenly there are question marks as a semi-final looms on Wednesday night.

The Sky Blues go into the sudden-death match against Perth Glory as favourites, but their form has been mixed since the league resumed in mid-July.

Chief executive Danny Townsend hasn’t lost confidence in the team, despite being the only one in the finals to not have won a match in its past five attempts.

“I guess it is not often we go into a match as an underdog, and maybe we will,” Townsend says.

“If you watch all the recent matches back it is just little moments that led to the results. It is not an excuse, but maybe it was a function that the season wasn’t on the line then.

“Now we’ve got two football games to win the double (having won the Premier’s Plate by topping the ladder) … and we know how to win.”

The Sydney FC squad warms up at Macquarie Uni

COVID-19 has forced soccer into unprecedented times on and off the field and, while the A-League will celebrate its grand final at Sydney’s Bankwest Stadium on Sunday evening, an even more crucial off-season looms straight after the winner of Sydney’s match meets whoever emerges from the Melbourne City and Western United semi-final.

Club owners have global advisory firm Raine Group searching for potential private equity or investment funding for the A-League, and a sport-specific over-the-top streaming service is also in the works. New owners also loom for Newcastle Jets and Central Coast Mariners, while expansion club Macarthur FC will join the league.

Townsend says Sydney FC has had its most successful season in financial terms, as revenue nears the $20m mark, more than 17,000 members have signed up and all the club’s major sponsors have been retained despite COVID-19. These are not normal times though, he admits.

Sydney FC coach Steve Corica has a challenge finding some form for his team

“I don’t think this is necessarily a badge of honour. Our costs went down (during the league’s hiatus). You don’t do lap of honour with a balance sheet, we got through it an effective way. But here we are in a new financial year and I don’t even have a budget set for the year yet. So there is a lot to do.”

Townsend has quickly become one of the most influential executives in Australian soccer since being appointed to the Sydney FC role in September 2017, and he is set to play a critical role in a league that needs revamping before next season’s resumption in December.

He says the clubs and Football Federation Australia are committed to finally making the league a separate and independent entity, though are still likely to work together on business and broadcast deals.

“The mutual plan is to accelerate that separation,” Townsend says. “One thing we know is we are still interdependent though. Separation may be not the panacea that we think, and we both know that we and the FFA need to work closely in a commercial sense to make sure the game drives premiums out of that.”

Townsend is also playing a big part in the mooted streaming service some have dubbed “SoccerFlix”, seen as a strategy to tap into the sport’s huge participation base and to survive the probable end to its broadcast deal with Foxtel.

“That whole media mix is something we need to double down on,” he says.