After his appointment as Brisbane Roar head coach, history-making Michael Valkanis sat down with aleagues.com.au to discuss why he returned to Australia and his learnings abroad.
There is a smile from ear to ear as Michael Valkanis sits down for this interview. The Australian is back home after eight years overseas.
It is a full-circle moment for a coach who has experienced it all abroad via the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium and Israel. That is why he’s back in the A-Leagues on a mission, not only with Brisbane Roar but more broadly across Aussie football.
His message is clear and powerful.
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“I got up after a long flight, I went for a run along the river, and I thought, what a beautiful country,” Valkanis told aleagues.com.au. “It’s amazing.
“A lot of Aussies don’t realise how lucky we are (to live) where we live. We always think the grass is greener on the other side, especially the football people that are like ‘it’s much better over there and so on’. We tend to criticise our own environment.
“We need to be ambassadors of it and promote it and and be positive about it, because it’s not until you go over to the other side and you experience what I’ve experienced, that’s not always easy. It’s got its challenges, and some of the things people whinge and complain about, it’s over there as well and even at some of the bigger clubs.
“Not everything is always perfect. We get carried away. Like I was living in in the south of Athens along the water. It’s beautiful, and it’s lovely but we’re lucky. We’re in a lucky country here, and having been ambassadors a whole lifetime of this sport and trying to promote it and keeping it where it is, we have to do it even more so now during these challenging moments of the A-League, and we need to help it like our forefathers did for the game and what they did for the game.
“We need to be more positive about our sport and where it’s got to and where it’s at and where it can go to. We need to be more positive and not so critical, because I’m telling you, in Europe, every club’s got its issues, and a lot of issues that people complain about here, that they think everything’s perfect in Europe, it’s not. It’s got its challenges.
“We’ve just all got to be really positive about our opportunity to be in the A-League, and what we can do on our part to leave something better when we go to make it better, to make it be the sport that everyone’s been proud over years and years.”
Valkanis has put together an extraordinary CV since leaving Australian shores in 2017 after the former Reds captain was a caretaker coach in Adelaide prior to his stint with Melbourne City.
He worked as an assistant at PEC Zwolle in the Dutch Eredivisie before joining the Greece national team as John Van’t Schip’s number two for two years prior to a brief stint in Belgium, where he took charge of KAS Eupen and helped the club avoid relegation in 2022.
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Then he was the first Australian to coach in the Israeli Premier League after his appointment at Hapoel Tel Aviv but the war in the Middle East prompted an end to his tenure just three months in back in October 2023.
After that, Valkanis followed Van’t Schip to Dutch powerhouse Ajax.
Not only did Valkanis become the first Aussie to work as an assistant at Ajax, he became the first Australian to coach the four-time European champions after deputising for two games in the absence of Van’t Schip.
In September last year, Valkanis departed Turkish top-flight side Adana Demirspor, having gone head-to-head with Jose Mourinho.
So, why an Australian homecoming?
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“Sometimes the stars align,” Valkanis – an Isuzu UTE A-League Premiership winner with Adelaide United as a player in 2006 – replied.
“To be quite honest, I had conversations with with Zac (Anderson) and Kaz (Patafta) a little bit earlier, and we spoke a lot about where the Roar are at, where the Roar needs to be at, and how I see the Roar, my football philosophy and where I would like to take the Roar.
“We had those conversations, but it was always like, okay, am I going to return back to the A-League? I wasn’t sure. But after speaking more and more to to Kaz and to Zac, and seeing that we aligned so much in what we want to try to achieve, I just thought it was the perfect project to take on and I’d been such a long time now in Europe, and that’s a different beast in itself. “
His challenge, first and foremost, is to restore Brisbane Roar to their glory days after replacing Ruben Zadkovich.
Brisbane are one of the Isuzu UTE A-League’s most successful clubs thanks to trailblazer Ange Postecoglou and some unforgettable nights at Suncorp Stadium but the three-time champions are far removed from those historic highs.
Since winning the 2013-14 Championship, Brisbane have only reached two Semi-Finals, in 2016 and 2017. They have not won a finals game in eight years. In fact, the Roar have missed the top six in four consecutive seasons.
But Valkanis is a man on a mission. The former Ajax and Greece assistant wants to “bring the Roar back in Brisbane”.
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“The Roar, the way it was when I was playing, and how difficult it was to go and get even a point when we got a point at the Roar, it was like we’ve done well,” Valkanis said.
“The energy within the stadium, it was probably one of the only places at the time where you loved coming because you thought you were playing in Europe as a player with the atmosphere. Even the identity they had as a team, that’s also connected with me as well, because I’ve always been that attacking-type coach.”
Valkanis added: “I believe in people. I believe in creating an identity, a football philosophy, and connecting with the community to create the energy.
“We need everyone aligned to that common vision of what we want to achieve.
“Creating an environment where everyone shares a common goal, everyone knows what we’re trying to achieve, and we’re going to do it collectively as one team that is everyone. That’s not just the players, it’s not just the coaches, that’s everyone, that’s admin, that’s football staff, that’s supporters.
“That also got me thinking about my experience that I had even at Adelaide United, because Australian football is different to Europe, and I’ve come through the NSL earlier where we’ve always been ambassadors of the game. That’s all we’ve ever done, and we need to continue doing that. We need to continue being ambassadors the game. We need to continue promoting the game in this beautiful country, because it is a beautiful country.
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“We need to do our work away to bring that community back together and we need to do what we need to do from a football perspective, but also connect again with the public of Brisbane and bring them back. Bring this football community back, because it’s huge.
“So we need to re-engage. I looked at it like one is that you create this this culture, this shared environment that everyone can do their best work in and become better as players and as people, but also then it’s engaging with the community to bring that back. You need them.
“You want to play in a full ground. When you’re a player, you want to play in a full stadium. So how do you do that? You need to go back out to the community. Engage with them, connect with the people. Make them feel you special and make our players feel and understand what supporters want from them, because the game’s about entertainment.
“That comes from playing a good brand of football, playing attacking football that entertains, that makes people excited. They come to the ground, they create memories, thinking ‘wow, this is great, the energy of the crowd’. So that’s why we have to engage. Bring these people back.
“Let them feel what we’re trying to do, let them feel our passion, that we’re going to work hard and make everyone proud of the orange Jersey we wear. To do that, it’s not going to be easy. We’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get to work, but you can do it. You can do it. There’s no doubt about it, but everyone has to be aligned to do it.
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“It’s not going to happen overnight but that’s what I’m excited about. That’s why I’m excited to work in an environment that knows what’s needed. Because you can go to Europe, you don’t get opportunities to work in environments like this. It’s different.
“This is part of my decision making as well. I’ve tried to rebuild something and leaving something behind again that can be special when rebuilding it. Brings the Roar back into Brisbane, bring Brisbane back to the fore that everyone’s excited about.
“We look at the days when they’re winning Championships, even players from opposing teams. We used to want to watch the Roar, opposition supporters wanted to watch the Roar.
“We’ve got to bring that back, because it’s a huge community here.”
