Another grand final win can put A-League icon in reach of Ange’s record

History has already been made in this season’s A-League men’s grand final, no matter what happens on the pitch.

For the first time in 49 years of Australian national league history, a team from New Zealand has not only reached the game’s domestic showpiece, but also earned the right to host it against Sydney FC, after premiers Newcastle and second-placed Adelaide United crashed out in the semi-finals.

The sold-out crowd at Auckland’s Go Media Stadium will also see an historic showdown between the two coaches involved, Steve Corica and Patrick Kisnorbo. Corica and Kisnorbo faced off in the 2021 grand final, when they were in charge of Sydney FC and Melbourne City, respectively; never before have the same two coaches returned to the grand final stage but with different clubs.

This time, Corica is with Auckland FC, the A-League’s newest club, and Kisnorbo, formerly of both City and Melbourne Victory, is in the Sydney dugout, rebuilding his reputation after disastrous stints in France and Japan.

For Corica, there is even more history at stake: the chance to leap ahead of his rivals and stamp himself as the most successful coach the A-League has seen.

A win for Auckland FC would clinch a third championship, to go with the back-to-back grand final victories he oversaw with the Sky Blues in 2020 and 2021.

That would pull him level with two of the National Soccer League’s coaching greats, Eddie Thomson and Zoran Matic, and within reach of the long-standing record held by Ange Postecoglou - still the only man to have won four championships, two in the NSL with South Melbourne, and two in the A-League with Brisbane Roar.

Corica, 53, is one of the most iconic figures in the A-League’s short lifespan. He is the only person to have been involved in all 21 seasons of the competition to date - first as a player, scoring the winning goal for Sydney in the inaugural grand final in 2006, then as a youth coach, assistant coach, and then head coach.

Corica’s achievements with Sydney are often - and unfairly - dismissed, because he is accused of riding the coattails of his successor. Graham Arnold departed in 2018 to coach the Socceroos, leaving his former assistant with a squad that had just finished top of the A-League by 14 points. But that overlooks the fact that plenty of other promoted assistants have taken over trophy-winning teams and not done so well.

It’s also true that after two decades with the same club, a change of scenery has been to Corica’s benefit, painful as it was to have been sacked after three rounds of the 2023-24 season.

The widespread expectation was that he would test himself overseas; technically, he has, albeit still in the A-League.

Corica has moulded Auckland FC in his own image: disciplined, controlled, ruthlessly efficient, and, in the best possible way, a little bit annoying.

His teams carry the same quiet arrogance that occasionally bubbles out of him in verbal clashes with rival coaches and fans. It’s not always pretty, but it works. His methodology resonates with the locals, who have supported the club in huge numbers from day one, and were treated to a first-placed finish in their inaugural season.

Then again, Corica’s critics would argue that because Auckland are owned by US billionaire Bill Foley, and have spent freely on players since joining the competition, he hasn’t achieved anything special. That, too, ignores the difficulty in building a club from the ground up, particularly in a market where previous teams had failed.

But raw numbers can’t be dismissed, and Corica can silence the dissenters with a third grand final triumph. Regardless of Saturday’s result, he has little left to prove in the A-League, and unless he wants to stick around to chase Postecoglou’s record, he should receive, if he hasn’t already, plenty of offers to coach elsewhere in Asia or Europe.

Kisnorbo, meanwhile, signed a three-year contract extension with Sydney FC this week and is yet to lose a match since being parachuted in to replace Ufuk Talay in March. They look a different outfit to the one that staggered through the first two-thirds of the season.

Kisnorbo won the last grand final battle against Corica five years ago; if he can repeat it, he would join Arnold, Corica, and a handful of others as a two-time grand final winner, with hopes of surging past them in the near future.

But this shapes as Corica’s moment, and one that could force even his harshest critics to accept where he sits in Australian soccer history: right near the top.