Joe Montemurro speaks to KEEPUP’s Sacha Pisani about his journey from George Cross in the Victorian state leagues to Italian giants Juventus, as the Australian coach continues to make a huge impact in women’s football.
Joe Montemurro now calls Turin home. The Australian is at the forefront of an exciting era in women’s football with Italian powerhouse Juventus.
But the role of an historic state league club in Victoria is not lost on Montemurro.
Eyebrows were raised when Caroline Springs George Cross, then known as Sunshine George Cross before relocating and changing their name in 2019, turned to an unproven 37-year-old in March 2006.
That man was Montemurro. The former Australian midfielder – who called time on his playing career aged 28 – had no prior senior coaching experience before taking on the role at George Cross amid the serious threat of relegation.
Montemurro, who was plucked from his youth coaching role at storied Australian side and 2000 Club World Cup participants South Melbourne, masterminded a shock victory over his former employer in his debut match.
George Cross went on to avoid the drop from the then-known Victorian Premier League.
As Montemurro savours his first title with Juventus Women and European history while making an impact on football across the globe, he credits George Cross for his rise from the humble surroundings of Chaplin Reserve to the state-of-the-art facilities at a world juggernaut.
“I was doing youth-team stuff at South Melbourne,” Montemurro told KEEPUP as he recalled his first senior coaching role with George Cross. “Just enjoying it from that perspective and I got a call from [George Cross board members] Lewis Cassar and Charlie Borg at the time. They said ‘we’ve looked at you the last year or two and you’ve done really well. We’d love to give you an opportunity at George Cross’. I said I haven’t coached senior football and I really didn’t have an intention of coaching senior football, it was quite out of the blue.
“Having bit of success at youth level and always trying to learn. It was probably the best learning phases of my life, going into the lion’s den because George Cross is a pretty brutal club. Everyone is pretty straight forward and you have to get credit to that. I learnt a lot. I learnt a lot in terms of just starting to instil ideas and sticking to them because everyone has an opinion of who should play. You had to be pretty tough. I credit George Cross for having the guts to take a punt on a young coach. They’ve always done that, given unknowns an opportunity.”
Montemurro flipped former NSL club George Cross on their head, changing the way the team training and played. The approach to football was something not seen before in Sunshine, who had re-emerged from the depths of Victoria’s third tier to the top division in consecutive seasons previously.
“There were two things – the political side and football side. The football side, they were obviously a club always in survival mode and I tried to pull away from that,” Montemurro said. “I tried to say, okay, we have to try to play some football here, somehow have an opportunity of maybe controlling the game a bit instead of all-hands-on deck. We didn’t have the expenditure. It was the time at the end of the NSL and there were NSL players demanding a lot of money.
“I basically cleaned out the squad and reduce the budget. There were a lot of players loyal to the old coach and that’s understandable – Chris Taylor is a great coach. And then I just tried to instil a couple of young players. We threw them in there to stabilise the team and let the football do the talking, instead of worrying about signing big superstars and spending money they didn’t have. It was pretty ballsy at the time. Who is this guy, it’s his first coaching gig, he can go and get big players and rely on these experienced guys and he’s saying, no not really, I’m not gonna do it that way. I’m going to do it sustainable and the right way.
“There were a lot of people against me, there were a lot of people who wanted my head because I was a nobody and they wanted their own guy. That’s fine, that’s coaching, everyone has an opinion. But it was great learning. We saved the team. We saved the budget.”
Montemurro has not looked back, shaping Australian football and leaving a legacy wherever he has been.
Legacy and leaving a foundation for clubs to build on is something Montemurro is big on. Having a strong but adaptable philosophy is at the heart of his success.
“I think a strong methodology has the ability to adapt but still you can see the similarities that you do every week. You’ll always see us finding solution in build-up, middle-third work, attacking-third work but it might be this week, we might not press as high or we might be constructively direct from build-up,” Montemurro, who continues to fly the Australian flag abroad, said.
“A strong philosophy has the ability to adapt but to adapt within the style you always want to play. I make no bones about it, Chelsea three-four weeks ago [in the Women’s Champions League], I’m not going to go play expansive football against Chelsea, where they haven’t lost for three years and never been kept goalless for three years at their ground. I’m not going to go there and open up because we’ll get opened. I did allow them to have the ball a little bit more but we worked so well to bringing them into areas, when they’re there if we have the opportunity to win the ball, this is where we can hurt them.”
After various roles with Hume City and South Melbourne in men’s football, Montemurro landed at Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City, where he delivered back-to-back Liberty A-League titles while he also worked as an assistant to the men’s A-League outfit.
Montemurro created history in 2015-16 after City went through the entire women’s campaign without dropping a point.
He had a 77% win rate as head coach of City across the 2015-16 and 2016-17 A-League Women seasons – the highest win rate of any coach in that time, per Opta.
“The whole belief in the women’s program was so high on the priority list,” Montemurro said of City. “I even liked the fact they waited and got the foundations right before they launched the team. So that was two years in the planning. The biggest achievement for me was the fact that we created a base for the legacy to continue on.
“I still think the Melbourne City program is still one of the benchmark programs in Australian women’s football. Everyone says we had the biggest budget but we didn’t, we were just a bit more creative with how we did things.”
It is often put to Montemurro about the switch from men’s to women’s football and whether he aspires to return to the area of the game where he first started. However, he does not view it like that.
“Obviously you never discount anything football and you put it in context of your career. But there is an exciting growth that won’t happen in men’s football and that’s what excites me,” Montemurro added.
All of us involved in women’s football have a responsibility for the growth of the game and the movement that’s happening.
“The reason I can’t differentiate it is because the rules are exactly the same, we don’t play with a smaller ball or ground, so why would I differentiate men’s and women’s football? It doesn’t make sense to me. I coach exactly the way I coach a men’s team. Obviously you have to manage load differently because the physicality is different but there’s no difference apart from that. From that perspective, until they change the rules, then it differentiates the sport but it’s the same sport.”
His work did not go unnoticed in Melbourne. Montemurro was headhunted by Arsenal Women – a dream move for the 52-year-old, who had supported the club as a boy.
Montemurro led the revival of a proud club but one who had fallen behind Chelsea and Manchester City prior to his arrival in London, where he ended Arsenal’s Women’s Super League title drought in 2018-19.
A Women’s League Cup the season prior was also added to the collection followed by consecutive runners-up medals and a finals appearance in the 2017-18 FA Women’s Cup.
Montemurro boasted a 76% win rate during his Arsenal spell from the 2017-18 to the 2020-21 season in the Women’s Super League – the second-highest rate of any coach in that time (minimum five games).
He eventually called time on his Arsenal tenure at the end of the 2020-21 campaign. His parting gift? Qualification for this season’s Women’s Champions League.
“Arsenal was really out the blue,” said Montemurro, whose Arsenal scored more goals (211), had a higher shooting accuracy (57%) and had more possession (63%) than any other team in the Women’s Super League from the 2017-18 too the 2020-21 seasons.
“I thought it was hoax email, seriously. I got an email from an agent who I’d worked with in year one at City and we kept in touch. I was getting a lot of opportunities in the US at the time, but it didn’t feel right to go to the US. It wasn’t where I wanted to be.
“Arsenal said are you interested and flew me over. I had a meeting with (former CEO) Ivan Gazidis and football director Clare Wheatley. I did a bit of research of where they were and the funny thing was I don’t think they knew where they wanted to go. It was just the situation. They had won so much previously that you take the eye of the ball. It’s natural, normal.
“Basically went in and pretty much did a George Cross, cleaned the place up. I just reduced the squad to a very minimal squad and we had a methodology of play. Brought in a bit of dignity to the team because they had lost an identity of who they were.
“One of the main things for me to do so was to instil a way of play, good recruiting processes. I even rebuilt the scouting network. There was a lot of backroom stuff that needed to be done because it wasn’t there. Year three was killed because of COVID, which I actually think we would’ve went close to winning it in 2019-20. Last year our objective was the Champions League and we did that.”
Montemurro now finds himself at the helm of an ambitious Juventus project, which marries with his own ambitions and beliefs.
Of Italian background, Montemurro was appointed in June last year and he has already made history after guiding Juve to the quarter-finals of the Champions League, pipping Sam Kerr and last season’s runners-up Chelsea to the knockout phase.
Juve became the first Italian club to achieve the feat, while the Bianconere conquered Milan 2-1 in Saturday’s Supercoppa Italiana.
“I had no intention of going back into football for at least six-12 months. I had to make a decision. It was a bit of a gut feeling. Maybe this was the time, I had set the foundations at Arsenal,” said Montemurro.
“Around March-April, the Juve sports director came to see me in London. We had a good chat. I liked what I heard because it had these little layers of processes of where they wanted to go over four years. I then married it with lifestyle.
“They’ve only been around for four years, the Italian league has grown amazingly. I just liked the way Juve were doing things. Europe is a big thing because they’ve obviously won the league over the years, so Europe was the next step. That interested me. The Champions League has gone into the group stages now, it’s a different mentality and I think it’s worked for us. Low and behold, we’ve created history in Italian football. An Italian team has never gone past the group stages or into the quarter-finals.”
Before going head-to-head with European elite Wolfsburg and Chelsea in the Champions League, Montemurro wanted to set a benchmark of where Juve stack up against the continent’s best.
It’s safe to say Montemurro’s Juve surpassed that as they await to face French giants Lyon in a mouth-watering last-eight tie pitting the Australian with compatriot and Matildas star Ellie Carpenter.
“The strength of the group, a little bit of belief and some smart approaches to games got us through,” Montemurro said. “We have exceeded year one’s expectations but it’s always nice to set that bar high because it makes my job easier in terms of ascertaining standards.
“We can keep the standards high in training and around the club very, very high now we’re competing with the best eight teams in Europe.”
Montemurro’s reign is still in its infancy. So what is he hoping to achieve in the north of Italy?
“If you’re true to yourself and you’re quite clear in instilling scenarios in football, success will come. I believe in the football gods – if you do the right and honest thing, you’ll always be successful,” he said.
“The second and most important part is to keep doing what I’ve been doing in all my coaching and it’s to leave a bit of something at every club that they can use to grow with it. We can go as far back as Melbourne City or even George Cross or South Melbourne, there was always a clear vision of football and training methodology. However long this job lasts at Juve, to talk away like I did with Arsenal, there was a style of play that was very identifiable to Joe’s way and there were processes put in place where the club can be better.”
