If there is one thing that will not change under new boss Airton Andrioli, it is the emergence of young talent at Adelaide United.
Adelaide’s Head of Youth Football and first-team assistant, Andrioli has been at the club for the past five years and has played a pivotal role in shaping South Australia’s football pathways.
The youth guru has been instrumental in the success of Adelaide’s famed academy and production line to the A-Leagues, helping either identify or develop current and past stars like Nestory Irankunda, Luka Jovanovic, Aurelio Vidmar Medallist Ethan Alagich, Ryan White, Harry Crawford, and Amlani Tatu, Giuseppe Bovalina, Steven Hall and Alex Popovic among others.
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Former Solomon Islands head coach Andrioli led both Adelaide’s seniors and reserves squads to their respective NPLM SA Grand Finals, with the seniors claiming a maiden NPL Championship in 2023. He will continue leading the youth team until the end of June, with the Reds to provide a further update on the future of the program in due course.
The emergence of young players will continue on his watch in 2025-26 and beyond.
“It won’t change,” Andrioli said of Adelaide’s youth vision. “It’s a passion and something the club wants to continue to do.
“For me to be able to lead those players in the A-League, players who we started working with five-six years ago and seeing them achieving their goals, it’s something very special.
“We want to continue that. We want players to understand that this club is always prepared to give opportunities, not just to young South Australian players but if anyone has any aspirations, this is the club to me.
“We value young players. We want that to continue on.”
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This role represents Andrioli’s first head coaching position in the A-Leagues but his fingerprints are all over South Australian football.
He was technical director of Football South Australia from 2009 up until 2020, working with former Adelaide boss Veart and Richie Alagich.
Now, Andrioli is looking to deliver A-Leagues success to the Reds.
“It’s very important we create a clear template in which everybody understands the message and the structures of the team,” he told club media.
“I’m very much a believer that structure gives players freedom to express themselves. If the structure is good, players understand when and where to do certain things, they can be express themselves better with more confidence.
“This will be the challenge for me over the next few years that we get that template clearly defined and understood by everyone.
“From that, it gives the young players who don’t have that experience the security to do understand if they do the principles and structures properly, they will be in a good place.”
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David v Goliath battle in 2005
While Andrioli has landed his first senior head coaching job in the Isuzu UTE A-League, the former Gremio player has plenty of experience.
He had spent two years playing for West Adelaide in the National Soccer League (NSL) before a brief coaching stint with Canberra Eclipse in the early 2000s.
Then, he led minnows Solomon Islands against Guus Hiddink’s Socceroos in 2005.
Andrioli was back home in his native Brazil when he received a call from the Solomon Islands Football Federation president with one question: “Are you prepared to come do mission impossible?”.
That mission centred on a David vs Goliath battle against the Socceroos in the final Oceania World Cup play-off before that famous date with Uruguay in 2005.
He had just a month to quickly get the footballing minnows up to speed – a national team that had not been together for more than a year.
“I was very surprised when I received the call from the president, but I accepted the call because it would certainly be a fantastic experience,” Andrioli told aleagues.com.au during the 2022-23 Finals Series.
“Two weeks later, I was on my way to Honiara. It was a massive challenge. The national team had not been together for over a year. No football games nor any training camps.
“I had a week to select the squad and then fly to New Zealand for training and a couple of friendly games against some local teams, before flying to Australia.”
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There was nothing simple about this already daunting task against Australia’s ‘Golden Generation’ – a team headlined by Mark Viduka, John Aloisi, Mark Schwarzer, Tim Cahill, Brett Emerton and Lucas Neill.
This was a country ranked 138th in the world, going head-to-head with a nation 88 spots above them on FIFA’s list.
“Our preparation was very poor, and to make matters worse, I was only informed the day before the game that our main player, Commins Menapi, was suspended,” Andrioli recalled.
“The little preparation we had was all around him, so that was not good news.”
The two-legged tie was Hiddink’s first taste of Australian football and while his Socceroos cruised to a 7-0 win in Sydney 18 years ago, the return leg in Honiara was not as straight forward.
In Hiddink’s own words, it was a “disaster” as the Socceroos scrapped home with a 2-1 win over the 10-man hosts. Australia went on to end their 32-year FIFA Men’s World Cup exile, but it was an unforgettable experience for the Brazilian.
“Our team wasn’t anywhere near at the fitness level required for a match like that. We lasted 20 minutes but after the first goal their quality was far too much for us to handle,” Andrioli said of the opening leg at Sydney Football Stadium.
“There was no chat with Guus, I don’t think he was interested in talking to us. He was particularly upset after the second game in Honiara. They had to work very hard to get the result against 10 players, as we had a player sent off when we equalised from a penalty.
“He didn’t want to shake hands after the game, I’m sure he had his reasons.
“Nevertheless it was a great experience to be part of these games.”
His time with the Solomon Islands – which extended for four years and included being in charge of the men’s and women’s teams as well as the beach side – forms part of a unique story about a man who has been the brains behind youth development in South Australia since 2009.
Andrioli grew up in Novo Hamburgo – a city around 70km away from Porto Alegre – where Gremio and Internacional are based.
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Named after Gremio legend Airton Ferreira da Silva, he had grown up supporting the Brazilian giants, who even paid a “substantial” fee to prise him away from his hometown club. He even signed a professional contract for Gremio at the age of 19.
Then, years later, he somehow found himself in Australia, thanks to meeting his Aussie wife while playing in Switzerland.
“I knew nothing. The only thing I knew about Australia was Skippy the Bush Kangaroo because I used to watch it on black and white TV in Brazil. I didn’t know they played football,” Andrioli said as he went on to play alongside Stan Lazaridis, Ross Aloisi, Richie Alagich and Pablo Cardozo at West Adelaide.
“We ended up sending a video to a friend who knew Eddie Thomson and Raul Blanco. We had already started the process of trying to come to Australia. We spent 11 months doing it.
“I came to Australia in 1994. Got married six weeks later. Signed for West Adelaide.”
Laying the foundations in South Australia
Adelaide United are reaping the rewards of a youth program established by Andrioli 16 years ago which has resulted in a remarkable production line of talent.
He was technical director of Football South Australia from 2009 up until 2020, working with h Veart and Alagich. It was a tenure in which the program was almost shut down.
But having established that pathway through the federation, Andrioli went on to become Adelaide’s youth guru – the club’s Head of Youth Football and the head coach of their youth team in NPLM SA, while working as an assistant to Reds boss Veart.
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“We started with a vision, to provide opportunities for a bigger pool of players to come into a better environment rather than having talent spread around everywhere. That’s how we started,” he recalled from his time with the federation.
“I remember the first meeting we had with the local clubs back then, the presidents. The only thing they didn’t do was throw rocks at us when we proposed what to do. It involved changing how we selected players and how we brought them in, starting from the age of 13, then gradually moving to 14s, 15s (which is National Training Centre these days) and then eventually having a pathway to Joeys and maybe Adelaide United.
“The process of identification for us was the key thing. We provided young players from the age of 12, which is really hard to make a decision on these kids. So we gave them the chance to spend five-six months in that pool. We set up a program where we set up coaching education for the coaches involved and extended the time these kids spent with us. Kids are constantly changing.
“We wanted to provide a longer period of time for these kids to show themselves without putting too much pressure.
“When they changed the national technical director…. They came to our state and wanted to close all the programs, like they did in every program. I said, ‘I’ll take you around to see what we do and if you can give us two good reasons for us to stop doing what we’re doing, we will stop’. We were developing coaches who were working at the clubs. So it was a double impact. He takes it back to the club and implements it. It was a vision for football to grow.
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“In the end, he said, ‘you have a fantastic setup but we still want you to shut down the program’. Lucky we had the backing of our CEO Michael Carter. We stuck with our programs here, we did not close. Every other state closed NTC.
“At the time we had a problem with the transition of players coming through our programs to Adelaide United. The people involved (at the time) were putting a blockage.
“When Carl moved into becoming Adelaide assistant, that started to change because Carl was working with me. He had been the NTC Coach. Carl was there for seven years. He knew the door had to open for them to move on.
“Eventually when the door opened and there wasn’t a blockage, people started to see.”
