Ahead of their hotly-anticipated clash against reigning Premiers Melbourne City in Round 1 of the new Ninja A-League campaign, aleagues.com.au takes a look at how giants Sydney FC will fare in season 2025-26.
The Ninja A-League 2024-25 season was certainly a standout one for Sydney FC, albeit for the wrong reasons.
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Heading into the season, Ante Juric and his football department were forced to reshape their squad following a large number of high-profile exits during the off-season.
Gone were the likes of CommBank Matildas star Cortnee Vine, key defender Charlotte McLean and legendary club goalkeeper Jada Whyman and replacing them were experienced Matilda Kyah Simon and talented young midfielder Hana Lowry as well as English forward Millie Farrow from Perth Glory.
However, that much upheaval in the off-season proved to be detrimental to the squad’s cohesion and they struggled to hit the ground running.
In fact, Juric’s side would go on to suffer six losses from their opening eight games of the campaign and it would prove costly when it came to qualifying for the Finals Series.
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But in a bid to change his side’s fortunes ahead of the new season, Juric has not only revamped his roster, but also his training methods before Round 1.
“I take a lot of accountability for last year in a lot of ways,” said Juric when speaking to journalists ahead of the new Ninja A-League season.
“But this year we’ve done a little bit more 11 on 11 (in training), more game situations, because I think last year it was a newish team.
“We did move a few people on this year, but I don’t think I did enough early on (last year), so they weren’t in sync as quickly as I wanted them to (be).
“This year we’ve done a lot more 11 v 11, and patterns of play so they get used to each other. So by Round 1, we’re ready.”
It’s not just the coach who believes his new training methods will pay dividends; the playing group have noticed the difference too.
“Yeah, we’ve definitely focused in on more 11 V 11 play. Like, we have a lot more people coming to training as train ons to make up the numbers of 11 V 11,” smiled Sydney FC captain Nat Tobin at the club’s official season launch.
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“But in saying that, it’s also a very short pre-season. So I don’t think you really can be firing completely in the first round, because you only have sort of five, six weeks together.”
She went on to say: “But I think we’ll come in firing a lot better than what we did last year.”
Injuries and inconsistencies plagued the Sky Blues throughout the 2024-25 season.
Already without star defender Kirsty Fenton due to an ACL injury picked up the season before, veteran Matilda Simon would ultimately miss the entire campaign due to a series of injuries while fellow off-season signing Lowry’s Sydney FC career got off to a cruel start, suffering a season-ending ACL injury in Round 4.
The good news for Sydney FC fans though is Lowry is expected to return in the early rounds of the new season, something that also has her teammates excited.
“Hana is such an amazing player,” said Tobin.
“You can see at the moment, until she comes back, we have somewhat of a gap in the midfield. We do have the young players there like Amelia Cassar and she’s really impressed, and she seems to sort of be filling that spot at the moment.
“But I think Hana coming back, she’s such an out-and-out six to then play, you know, her distributing role, and then you can push Bianca Gallic a little bit further up the field, who can then combine with Macca (Mackenzie Hawkesby).
“Yeah, she’ll be huge to have back.”
Another key factor that cost the Sydney FC during the 2024-25 season was their inability to settle on a first-choice goalkeeper.
Following the departure of Whyman, Juric put his faith in former Wellington Phoenix goalkeeper Brianna Edwards to be the club’s new custodian, however the New Zealand international struggled for form and was ultimately made just eight starts.
The reality is the Sky Blues found it nigh on impossible to replace Whyman between the sticks last season and alongside Edwards, head coach Juric experimented with three other keepers in Jasmine Black (6 apps), Beth Mason-Jones (4 apps) and Tahlia Franco (6 apps) but none of them were able to make the position their own.
Coming into the new campaign it appears the Sky Blues have found their new shot-stopper though, with off-season signing American Heather Hinz handed the number one jersey, and she’s got the backing of her captain.
“Yeah, the goalkeeper position this year has been filled,” said Tobin when asked about the issues of last season.
“Our number one is obviously Heather, brought in from overseas. She has quite a bit of experience, obviously NWSL experience and then USL experience.
“She actually reminds me a lot of Jada the way she plays. She’s wonderful, Heather. She’s got amazing reflexes, and I do, even at training, I feel really comfortable and confident with her behind me.”
Despite a strong finish to the season, the Sky Blues narrowly missed out on extending their record Finals Series streak to 17 consecutive years, and that in itself was enough to prompt large-scale change during the off-season.
Alongside the arrival of Hinz, Juric has added 11 more new faces to his first team squad, blending a mix of Ninja A-League experience in the form of Central Coast Mariners Championships winner Bianca Galic, overseas signings like Laurie-Ann Moïse and young Australian talent.
Chief among those young talents is former Western Sydney Wanderers midfielder Cassar, a player Juric believes has an incredibly bright future.
“I think she’s gonna be a superstar,” said Juric when asked by reporters which player he’s most excited to see this season.
“I tried to get her last year before she went to Wanderers. She didn’t play any minutes there, so I went and tried to get her again, and she came over, which is excellent.
“I think she’s a superstar in the likes of Cooney-Cross and (Kaitlyn) Foord and players like that. She’s a really impressive player, and she’s only 17, so she’s going to be important for us.
“And if I’m right, she’s going to have a quick trajectory to the Matildas.”
When you drill down into the numbers from last term, Sydney FC’s defensive record of 29 goals conceded was the fourth best in the competition.
However, it’s in the forward line where their issues truly stemmed, with the club bagging just 23 goals in 23 games – the lowest tally in the league last season.
“We’ve tinkered a little bit tactically. But again, if you look at last year, we missed the finals by, I think, three or four points in the end.
“We literally threw balls in the net, so there’s a lot of individual errors. And again, we brought personnel to fix that, but we have tinkered with a few things tactically, but a lot of it does come down to individuals.”
He went on to say: “We had some flaws last year, I believe, in the back half in the defence and up top, so we didn’t score enough, and we’ve filled those positions, definitely with Heather and in goal and Maddison (Ayson), so that’s going to help.
“Then up top, we’ve got four new players, so we’re hoping that’ll help in terms of bettering last year, but yeah, we always look in detail with the players, and a lot come across our desk.”
