MELBOURNE, May 21 (Reuters) - Auckland FC will bid to become the first New Zealand team to win an A-League championship and join a rare club of cross-border winners in world soccer by beating Australian heavyweights Sydney FC in the Grand Final on Saturday.
Few clubs compete in foreign domestic leagues and fewer still go on to win them, though there are notable exceptions.
AS Monaco have claimed eight titles in France's Ligue 1 while Northern Ireland's Derry City have won the league twice in the Republic of Ireland.
Auckland will look to emulate them in just their second A-League season when they host the Sky Blues at a sold-out Mount Smart Stadium.
Some home fans may feel the Grand Final has come a year late given Auckland's fairytale debut season in 2024/25.
The Black Knights won the Premier's Plate for finishing top of the table at the end of the regular season but lost a semi-final playoff against Melbourne Victory.
Having done the hard work with a 1-0 win in Melbourne, Auckland crashed to a 2-0 defeat on home soil, leaving expectant supporters devastated.
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This time, there has only been a steely determination from the New Zealanders, who beat Melbourne City in a shootout to reach the semis and won 3-0 at Adelaide United to seal a 4-1 aggregate victory for their place in the Grand Final.
Coach Steve Corica, formerly a Sydney FC favourite, said there was a resolve in his group to prove people wrong.
"We knew everyone wrote us off," Corica said after the Adelaide win.
"That was motivation but we knew what we had in the change-room."
There may be mixed emotions for Corica as he plots the downfall of a team he coached to back-to-back championships in 2019-2020.
As a player, the former Australia midfielder scored the only goal in Sydney's 1-0 win over Central Coast Mariners in the inaugural 2006 A-League Grand Final.
Corica will match wits with his nemesis Patrick Kisnorbo in the opposing dug-out, the coach whose Melbourne City team defied Sydney's bid for an unprecedented third successive title in 2021.
Kisnorbo oversaw a 3-1 win over Corica's Sydney in the 2021 Grand Final but will now look to bring the league's most successful club a record-extending sixth championship.
Possibly the least-liked Australian team among neutral fans, Sydney are renowned for playing villainous dream wreckers and burnished that reputation last Saturday by foiling sentimental favourites Newcastle in a shootout win at the Jets' home ground.
Although finishing a modest fifth on the table at the end of the regular season, Sydney are unbeaten in their last seven games, including a 2-2 draw against Auckland in a thriller at Sydney Football Stadium a month ago.
Sydney's left back Ben Garuccio is gunning for an A-League title at a third club, after winning back-to-back Grand Finals with Melbourne City (2021) and the now-defunct Western United (2022).
His 17-year-old teammate Akol Akon, a winger with South Sudanese heritage, will hope to become the league's youngest Grand Final winner for a team peaking at exactly the right time.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
