Auckland FC has made A-League history, becoming the first side from New Zealand to be crowned champion in either the men’s or women’s competition.<\/p>\n
Having only entered the ALM ahead of the 2024-25 season, in which they claimed a shock premiership, the Black Knights added a second piece of silverware to their cabinet with a cagey 1-0 victory over league heavyweight Sydney FC.<\/p>\n
New Zealand international and club inaugural signing Cam Howieson was the hero at a sold-out Mount Smart Stadium, firing a deflected, long-range match-winner in the 60th minute.<\/p>\n
A Sydney FC great, Auckland coach Steve Corica claimed his third championship after leading the Sky Blues to back-to-back titles in 2019 and 2020.<\/p>\n
Corica is the first coach in the ALM era to win three grand finals, with Ange Postecoglou winning two National Soccer League championships and two in the modern league.<\/p>\n
Last year’s premiers Auckland are the third club in league history to win a grand final from outside the top two, having finished the regular season in third.<\/p>\n
Both teams struggled for attacking fluency in a season decider that will not be remembered as a classic, with the sides combining for just 13 shots across the 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Sky Blues forward Apostolos Stamatelopoulos and Auckland winger Jesse Randall traded first-half half-chances before Howieson sent the majority of the 28,374 fans at Mount Smart Stadium into raptures with his fortuitous strike.<\/p>\n
Howieson’s left-footed effort deflected off Jordan Courtney-Perkins, wrong-footed Sydney shot stopper Harrison Devenish-Meares and nestled into the back of the net.<\/p>\n
Sydney, in search of a record-extending sixth championship, pushed forward to some effect in the game’s closing stages, but saw presentable opportunities to captain Rhyan Grant and substitute Rhys Youlley go begging.<\/p>\n
ABC\/AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Auckland FC has made A-League history, becoming the first side from New Zealand to be crowned champion in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[32406,179436,64,22065,336557,336558,63,596,13198,85,670],"class_list":["post-689577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-a-league","tag-alm","tag-au","tag-auckland","tag-auckland-fc-vs-sydney-fc","tag-auckland-vs-sydney","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}