Above: Ante Juric lifts the championship. Image: Sydney FC.
By Genevieve Henry (4/2/26).
Three premierships. Three championships. Seven consecutive grand finals. Ante Juric achieved all of this as the longest serving head coach in eight and a half seasons with Sydney FC.
Now at the bottom of the table and suffering their first Sydney Derby defeat in 6 years, the Sky Blues have lost all hope of recreating this glory. Western Sydney Wanderers were the only team below Sydney on the A-League Women ladder. This 3-2 defeat was the last straw for the club, who announced Juric’s departure yesterday. Academy Technical Lead and NPL Assistant coach James Slaveski will step up as interim head coach.
Many fans of Sydney and the A-Leagues would have assumed the lacklustre 2024-25 season was an outlier for Sydney — although they nearly managed to climb back up — but no one expected Juric’s side to be on the bottom again this season.
Juric built a legacy of winning at Sydney. In the rare years Juric was in charge where the Sky Blues didn’t come away with a trophy, they were still competing at the top. Now, they’re in a battle to crawl up from the bottom. The only thing Sydney can currently be grateful for is the lack of relegation in the A-Leagues.
Perhaps it’s a plague of injuries that has done the Sky Blues in; perhaps it’s waves of departing players — but these losses are commonplace in the world of football. More than likely, Juric has been doing the same thing for a long time and whether the rest of the league is catching up to him or he’s stuck in a rut, something had to change for Sydney to maintain their status as a top club.
Although fans, players, and the club will be sad to see Juric go, it’s not with shame that he departs.
“Ante will forever be remembered as one of the most important figures in Sydney FC’s history,” Sydney FC Executive Vice Chairman Sebastian Gray said. “On behalf of the board, we want to sincerely thank him for everything he has given to this club over eight and a half seasons, including an incredible run of success that delivered six major trophies and seven straight Grand Finals.”
The impact of Juric goes beyond his titles — he has had a hand in developing many of the most prominent players in Australian football. Cailtin Foord, Alanna Kennedy, Amy Sayer, Cortnee Vine, Remy Siemsen, Charlize Rule, Clare Wheeler, Kahli Johnson, and Jada Whyman are regulars in current Matildas squads, and that’s barely scratching the surface of the big names Juric has worked with.
Juric is famous for his success in developing young players into superstars. He and Sydney have often had an eye for who the next big name is — his 2025-26 squad is stacked with young talents with Indiana Dos Santos (18), Willa Pearson (15), Maddie Caspers (18), Rubi Sullivan (17), Claire Corbett (15), and Skye Halmarick (17) to name a few. When Juric believes in a player, the footballing world often does, too.
Now, the cycle of development and departure that Juric mastered for so long seems to have come to an end at Sydney FC, stuck firmly in the development phase. Without big international signings or cohesion among their other big name players, the heavy lifting is falling on the shoulders of players with little experience. While in a few years, the current Sydney squad could achieve great things, they’re not there yet.
It was time for a change. But it certainly doesn’t erase all the success Juric had with the Sky Blues.
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