MACARTHUR FC have officially announced former Socceroo & current Matildas boss Ante Milicic as their inaugural head coach for the club’s debut season in the Hyundai A-League.
Milicic will continue his duties with the Matildas through to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, finishing in July of that year before commencing work with Macarthur FC full time.
Milicic said on the appointment of his new role: “The timing is right for me and that was the main thing and I think the fact that I’ve been with two expansion teams, give me a real opportunity to bring in the people I want, both in staff and in players.
There’s a lost of work but there’s a lot of opportunity and I think the lead-in, the fact that I look over my time with those two previous other expansion club, they were done in a lot shorter timeframe and that gives me an opportunity to get the right people around me because that’s important. The area and the clubs got a lot of potential.”
Milicic, the first player to score a Hat-Trick in the A-League played 44 matches in the national competition between 2005-08 and represented the Socceroos 6 times scoring 5 goals.
Following his playing career, Milicic was called up as an assistant coach with Jan Versleijen’s Young Socceroos team for the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup before returning home to take up an assistant role with Melbourne Heart. In 2012 Milicic would join close friend Tony Popovic as inaugural assistant coach of Western Sydney Wanderers. The end of the 2013-14 A League season would see Milicic re-join the national team as assistant coach with Ange Postecoglou’s Socceroos, a role he would continue in until 2018 where he would take the head coaching role of the Australian women’s team.
Macarthur FC will enter the Hyundai A-League in the 2020-21 season
