There is no stopping Melissa Barbieri as she enters her 28th professional season. The Aussie icon chats to aleagues.com.au about her incredible mindset at the age of 44 and what the future looks like.
Melissa Barbieri has just finished training and is making the long commute home from Melbourne City’s base in Casey.
What she says next sums up the history-making Australian legend.
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“I know there’s something wrong with me,” Barbieri tells aleagues.com.au ahead of Sunday’s Round 1 opener against Perth Glory.
“I know people say you’ll know when you want to retire, but… like even right now after the session, I’m leaving and driving 76km to get home but I already want to be back,”
“I’m like damn it, I have to wait another 12 hours until I get back on the pitch!
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“There’s never a feeling of begrudgement or resentment. I don’t even resent the one-and-a-half-hour drive some days.
“I don’t begrudge the 5:30am starts where I have to get out of the house before the traffic starts. I have high respect for the club and I know their intentions are good.”
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This is a 44-year-old in her 28th professional season.
The former CommBank Matildas captain is the longest-serving national league player in Australian history by quite some distance and has achieved almost everything in the game, including appearing at four FIFA Women’s World Cups and winning the AFC Asian Cup.
But almost three decades later, and Barbieri is only looking one way… forward.
“I feel like I’m a better goalkeeper now than I ever was. I find myself looking forward to the future still rather than thinking about all the things I have achieved. That can be detrimental in some ways. If I had the best years of my playing days behind me, maybe I’d think differently,” she says.
“I really feel like I am improving as a goalkeeper. People think, ‘hang up the gloves, you’re 44… it’s time for the young ones to come through’. But I feel if I’m still getting better and still performing at a high level, looking to the future is a viable option.
“Maybe I won’t get that international call-up but I certainly can do my club proud and that’s just enough for me. One day I will look back on it and probably think I did a few great things. But knowing me, I’d probably have all the things I missed out on as well.”
A pioneer of the game in Australia, Barbieri is showing no signs of slowing down as reigning premiers City look to go one step further in 2024-25, having fallen short to Sydney FC in last season’s Grand Final.
Fast forward to this season and Barbieri has already ticked off something else on her bucket list – playing in the AFC Women’s Champions League for the first time, where City have already progressed to March’s quarter-finals.
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“I feel like the game is ever evolving. I was a field player for a very long time, so it put me in good stead to play the way we’re playing now with goalkeepers in terms of playing more of a part in building up,” says the 86-time Australia international, who is one of three goalkeepers at City this season, alongside Spanish recruit Malena Mieres and Sophia Varley.
“I think that part of the game that has excelled for goalkeepers in the last two to three years where you’ve seen such reliance on a goalkeeper’s possession ability. Not even just the shot-stopping the part but the part where you get to play with your feet.
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“That challenge everyday is what I love. I love pushing the boundaries. It’s like a huge maths problem that you have to find the solution to depending on what the opposition get to you. I just find it so intriguing. Learning about each and every one of my players, and having to accommodate for their skillset as well as my skillset is really challenging.
“I love the fact that I can get something wrong everyday and it drives me to turn up the next day to get it right.
“I just love that feeling of having to always find a new solution and become better in every technique. I just learned a new technique the other day and I look forward to having an opportunity everyday to try to get that technique as natural as possible.”
Barbieri is continuing in her dual role of player and assistant coach, supporting new boss Michael Matricciani at the reigning premiers.
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“I honestly think the amount of work a coach has to do… I’m relinquished of a lot of the things the full-time coaching staff have because of my playing,” she says.
“So a lot of the worries you might have as a full-time coach, I’m not allowed to take on because I need to focus on playing.
“I’m hugely thankful for that. Once I’m done playing in the morning, I’m allowed to just leave whereas the coaches go get lunch and go back on the computers to do more analysis etc.
“The one thing I’ve learnt, once you become a full-time coach, it does take a lot of time, determination and resilience, and all the works done behind the scenes, players only see a small snippet of it.
“Ever since I started doing my coaching licenses, I always was grateful for the amount of work put in just to come up for one clip of analysis because you know they’ve gone through a thousand of them just to get to that one point to make us better players.”
Could we see Barbieri in the dugout as a head coach in the future?
“I do feel like I have the capability to be a head coach,” she says.
“My understanding of the game is there.
“Can I deal with the cut-throat nature of being a coach? That is something I’ll have to learn, being such a loyal person, that could be make-or-break for me in terms of club football where you just turn up one day and you might have a run of losses and get the sack.
“It would be very hard for me to then switch off but I understand that is a learning part of being a coach. You’re going to get sacked one day, it’s how you leave the team better than you found it.”
In the meantime, Barbieri and City have their sights set on doing something no Ninja A-League side has done before in 2024-25.
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“The main thing we want to do is play the City way. We’re impacting, not only the game at hand, but the spectators – we leave a legacy of pride for our supporters and the faithful ones who come week in, week out to watch us,” she explained.
“It would be remise of me to say that we aren’t gunning for the treble. I think it’s the first opportunity for an Australian club to be able to do that (in the women’s game).
“I think there’s no harm in putting that out there. We are an ambitious club. We are humble and that doesn’t’ negate ambition. We are humble, hard-working athletes that want to play a certain style but it doesn’t negate our ambition to do great things.”
Watch Barbieri and City open their Ninja A-League campaign this Sunday when they host Perth Glory. Get your tickets here or watch the match on 10 Play or Paramount+.
Featured image: Melbourne City
