Noah Botic is soaring to new heights with Western United amid growing calls for a Socceroos call-up. He speaks to aleagues.com.au about his form, the noise and his future.
Listening to Noah Botic talk, there is a maturity in his voice. That’s understandable given his experiences at home and abroad.
This is a player who has spent time in Germany, and was wanted by global giants Bayern Munich and Manchester United. Now, he is thriving with Western United in the Isuzu UTE A-League as he catapults himself into the Socceroos conversation.
There is also the realisation that this might be his last season Down Under.
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“It’s the last season on my contract so I want to kind of finish on the high and prove myself, show the world what I can do, really,” Botic told aleagues.com.au ahead of Saturday’s blockbuster clash against league-leading Auckland FC in Tarneit.
Botic is at the top of his game; soaring to new heights under the tutelage of Australian icon John Aloisi, and spearheading Western United’s young and exciting outfit.
His eight goals in 2024-25 is the best return of his professional career as the 23-year-old vies for Golden Boot honours.
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“Of course” there is interest in the former Hoffenheim youngster. But Botic is measured in everything he does and won’t make a decision for the sake of it as he plots his next move.
Botic, though, is clear in his pursuit of returning to Europe.
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“It’s something I’ve spoken (about) with my family. I’ve always told myself that I want to end up back in Europe,” Botic said when asked about the future.
“It’s just about the right timing, whether that be at the end of this season or the next one, two years after that. It’s a decision I’ve got to make soon and in the next couple couple months.
“But at the moment, my focus is just mainly on Western United, what I can give to this club to make play-offs and then hopefully win another Championship for them.
“Any kid’s ambition playing in Australia is to always play in Europe, because that’s where you want to be.
“It’s a dream to play back in Europe again. Wherever that may be, I’m not too sure. Whatever club comes and offers, I want to make the the right decision for myself, and not just go to a team just to go there and hope for the best. It’ll be a big decision for myself.”
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The Subway Socceroos are likely part of that future.
Calls for a maiden senior national team call-up are growing louder. There is a lack of natural number nines, especially ones scoring regularly, in the Australian game as Socceroos boss Tony Popovic scours the globe ahead of March’s 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup qualifiers.
With eight goals in 16 games, 12 of those starts, Botic is well and truly knocking on the door.
How does he deal with the external noise?
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“Honestly, it’s easier said than done,” he said, having represented Australia at U16, U17 and U23 level. “I love what I’m doing.
“Since a young age, I always dreamed about playing for the national team and I feel like if you’re mainly focusing solely on that and and not what you should be doing at a club level, then you’re never going to get there. Because you might think, oh, you might be stressing sometimes, you play a game, you don’t score.
“I always feel like when I step onto the field, everything outside of that moment right there just kind of goes out of my head, and I just focus solely on playing that game of football.
“When I first came to to Western, I had that feeling like ‘oh, I want to be in the national team’. Once I’m sort of getting too old for the U23s, I want to take that next step and it took a year to kind of bounce back from that.
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“I make sure I keep myself level headed. My parents also do the same for me because they were obviously proud of me, and they wanted to help me, but they were really strict, and they want to make sure that I was level-headed playing football and didn’t let anything get to my head.
“It kind of takes you to that next level of football can be a really brutal game, and you’ve got to make a lot of sacrifices for these things. When things don’t go your way, (you’ve) just got to kind of stay positive as much as you can.
“At the end of the day, if I get picked it’ll make me the happiest person in the world, because I’ve dreamed about this since I was 10 years old, when I first wanted to play professional football.
“Obviously it’s kind of a good little period that I’m in now. We don’t have many strikers, so it makes it easier for myself, and then obviously some other boys doing well, like Archie Goodwin and Thomas Waddingham, now just moving over to Portsmouth.
“There’s a new kind of generation coming through which is what Australian football needs. The future looks bright for Australian football for attackers.”
Botic, though, is no stranger to noise.
This is an Australian talent who has attracted attention throughout his young career, especially after helping the Subway Joeys reach the Round of 16 at the 2019 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Brazil, while he was also named among The Guardian’s 60 best young talents in world football in 2019.
Then there are comparisons to the legendary Mark Viduka, which have come early in his footballing journey.
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“I was a bit surprised,” Botic recalled of the label and how he has handled it. “You’re always going to kind of get people that are saying this sort of stuff and a lot of kids will get the same sort of mentioning about the next this and the next that as a certain player.
“But I really embraced that. I was like ‘Oh, wow fair enough’. It kind of tells myself that I’m sort of doing the right things as much as I can. If I keep doing this, then the future is bright.
“Who knows whether or not I’ll be the next Mark Viduka, but I want to make sure that (I’m) the next Noah Botic for myself, for these younger kids to look up to.
“So then they can be like, ‘oh, I want to be the next Noah Botic one day’. That’s the kind of vision that I’ve got for myself in that sort of scenario.”
Now 23, Botic is benefitting from the wisdom of Socceroos great John Aloisi, who is the “main reason” reason the striker returned to Australia to join Western United four years ago.
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“I’m sure any young striker, whatever age you may be, before 20, knowing that he’d be a head coach, and he was coming into the team as well. So he’d be new, I’d be new so I can kind of learn off him a lot, and a lot of boys, I’m sure would would pick the same route as me.
“Him being an ex-Socceroo, a legend of Australia, played overseas in multiple top-five leagues in the world,” said the former Joeys captain. “He’s been around. He knows what it takes, knows what it took to be a legend of the game, an amazing attacker, great footballer. So any sort of chance I get to ask during training, kind of little things, be it my first touch, movement in the box. I always ask that question and he will always give me that advice.
“Sometimes we go over video, from the games and training and stuff, and he’ll let me know in this moment you can do this and do this better, and in this moment, this is what you did well. It’s helped me a lot over the past four years. I’ve felt like I’ve grown a lot from him teaching me and showing me different things.”
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But it all comes down to Botic’s love of the game. He is a student of football, always wanting to learn.
“Football is life to me. Any chance I can watch a game,” he said.
“I always just watch the best teams as much as possible, like Liverpool, because again you can learn from them while you’re watching.
“I don’t just watch it just for the fun of it. I’ll try and take something out of the game to learn from as much as possible.
“I always look at (Manchester City star Erling) Haaland where he positions himself in the box. So that’s the main thing.
“I always hear a lot of professionals say they don’t watch football outside of training or whatever, which is understandable, but I’m completely the opposite. Football is my life. I’ve started since I was three years old, and it’s been 20 years. It’s crazy to say that. So I can’t see my life without it really.”
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Botic’s determination to grow and improve is showing on the pitch this season, but it hasn’t been all smooth sailing.
A navicular stress fracture cut short his 2023-24 campaign and left him playing catch-up throughout pre-season.
It was a “deflating” injury that caught him off guard.
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“The season’s almost kind of been a pre-season for me in a way. I feel like I’ve got so much more to give,” he said.
“For four to six weeks prior to (the injury), I felt like a little niggle, kind of in my foot previously. But you don’t kind of think much of it. You’re a kid, you want to play, and you kind of think, ‘oh yeah it’s gonna pass, just give it a couple weeks or whatever’.
“That wasn’t the case. Every time I was stepping there was like a little bit of a pinch you feel. So I thought, better get a scan and then it happened to be a stress fracture, navicular, which obviously at the time I have no idea what bone that is, or whatever. But then it turns out to be a pretty significant bone to have a little fracture in, because the bone doesn’t get much blood flow into the foot.
“It took a good six, seven months to get fully back into training. That’s why the whole pre-season, I was just on the sideline doing my own individual stuff, and then obviously missed a little bit of the beginning of the season, kind of starting off the bench, because I hadn’t played any pre-season games leading up to the season.”
It is that mental resolve which was established during his eye-opening experience abroad.
First there was Manchester United, who came calling on the back of his exploits with the Joeys. The Red Devils – the team Botic supported as a boy – invited him for a trial.
“I was really surprised and very shocked. I almost kind of thought, like, Are you sure because at the time, my agent was telling me, ‘oh yeah United, want to give you a week trial’. And I thought, ‘are you pulling my leg?’.
“It originally came from the Joeys U16s Asian Cup when we qualified for the World Cup. In that tournament, I scored five goals. But then I heard from my agent that apparently there was a scout at that game, and he had gotten in contact with my agent.
“Then he let me know that they want to give me a trial for a week. I’ve asked my agent, ‘Are you taking the piss? Don’t take the piss with this man. You have to be serious about this’. He is like ‘yeah, yeah I’m very serious’. I thought, wow, that’s a bit of a shock.
“I was there for a week training, went to their facility and stuff, which is just next level. Like I saw all the players there; (Romelu) Lukaku, Chris Smalling at that time, Jesse Lingard, Marcus Rashford.
“I was there for a week, and then at the end of it, they actually said that they wanted me to come back for another week. But then some things didn’t happen.
“They kind of started prolonging the talks. Nothing else just kind of came from that. It was a bit unfortunate to end it there, because I would have loved to go back for another trial and to try and impress them as much as I can, but that’s football. Things just took a different turn. It wasn’t meant to be at that time.”
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That is when he landed at German club Hoffenheim.
While Bundesliga juggernaut Bayern Munich wanted to sign the Aussie teenager after one pre-season game with Hoffenheim, Botic opted against it.
“I was there (Hoffenheim) for a week and then instantly on the spot they wanted to give me the contract. We said yeah straight away to that,” Botic recalled.
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“Then the Bayern interest came about after my first pre-season game. I thought at my age, I didn’t feel like going to a bigger club as Bayern would have helped me as much. It would have been too overwhelming in a way.
“So I thought Hoffenheim was a bit more low key.”
Botic spent two years with Hoffenheim’s youth team between 2019 and 2021.
He played alongside current Germany international and Borussia Dortmund star Maximilian Beier as well as Aston Villa’s Belgium international Amadou Onana in the Under-19s.
But it was a “brutal” experience, due to COVID and being in a team with limited English-speaking players.
“Football’s a lonely sport, man,” he said. “It was tough because it was actually during the COVID period. Our season got cancelled, so it was a bit kind of up and down for me. I couldn’t come back to Australia. My parents couldn’t fly over to see me.”
Botic continued: “It’s tough. A lot of the boys weren’t English speakers and where I was based, locally in Hoffenheim, even though it’s a big club, the town is only like 4,000-5,000 people.
“It’s a really small village, like no one there, so obviously not many tourists come by there. So you’re not going to see many English speaking people.
“They always think, Australian player coming over, oh he’s here to take my spot. And they always feel like I’m not going to let him do that which is fair enough, you don’t, you know, obviously you want to fight for your for your spot, and not make it easy for the player.
“It was brutal at that time.”
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But that two-year spell in southwestern Germany shaped Botic.
“I felt like that whole experience really, really helped me because it helped me with being able to deal with the hardest of things. If you can get through that, it’ll help you in life.
“I felt like from that moment, that’s when my mentality was heightened in a way, and it helped me to to get to the position that I am now.”
