Melbourne City have clinched second spot in the Isuzu UTE A-League Finals Series and with it AFC Champions League Elite qualification after outclassing Sydney FC 5-1.
City were in the box seat to seal a top-two finish and ACL Elite football in 2025-26 heading into the final round of the regular season and they completed the job thanks to a rampant display at AAMI Park on Saturday night, while Sydney missed out on the top six.
First-half goals from Aziz Behich, Max Caputo and Marco Tilio set the tone in Melbourne, where Andreas Kuen and Medin Memeti added to the brutal scoreline in the second period as City won the coveted and lucrative ACL Elite race.
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Finishing second this season had the added incentive of direct qualification into the 2025-26 ACL Elite. The prize normally reserved for the Isuzu UTE A-League Premiers cannot be claimed by New Zealand’s Auckland FC due to their ineligibility for AFC tournaments. In 2024-25, just qualifying for the AFC Champions League Elite netted teams USD$800k (AUD $1.27m).
Substitute Patryk Klimala reduced the deficit in the second half but he could not prevent seventh-placed Sydney – who only needed a draw – from missing out on the Finals Series after finishing a point behind Adelaide United.
City – who have not lost at home to Sydney in the league since 2018 while it is the first time they have scored five goals against the Sky Blues – had avoided defeat in their last 20 A-Leagues matches when scoring first and they added to streak following a dominant outing.
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Captain and Socceroo Behich got the ball rolling with a fifth-minute opener after breaking the deadlock via his volley. It was his first goal in the competition since March 2014 and third ever in the A-Leagues.
Sydney did strike the woodwork twice in the opening half but it was one-way traffic as City ran rampant.
Academy graduate Caputo – who cracked a top-25 list during the week – made it 2-0 for the home side in the 26th minute – his fifth goal of the season as the Sky Blues’ defence was exposed again.
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Within nine minutes, City were three goals clear and this time it was Tilio on the scoresheet. On loan from Celtic, the in-form attacker’s pace and precision were on show as he finished coolly into the back of the net.
Sydney faced an uphill battle in the second half but Adrian Segecic tried to get them back into the contest as he forced a diving save from City goalkeeper Patrick Beach.
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An injury to Harrison Devenish-Meares paved the way for Sydney great Andrew Redmayne to come off the bench for his final appearance as a Sky Blue.
Unfortunately, he had to collect the ball from his net after Kuen thundered a volley past the veteran Socceroo as City moved 4-0 clear 32 minutes from the end.
The Sky Blues did pull a goal back as substitute Klimala got on the end of Douglas Costa’s cross.
But Memeti came off the bench to restore City’s four-goal cushion in the fifth minute of stoppage time.
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