{"id":431272,"date":"2026-05-17T00:07:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T00:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431272\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T00:07:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T00:07:15","slug":"football-a-league-grand-final-heads-to-auckland-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431272\/","title":{"rendered":"Football: A-League Grand Final heads to Auckland for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4JPK3TP_GettyImages_2273176047_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"Ben Garuccio of Sydney celebrates scoring a goal during the round 26 A-League Men match between Sydney FC and Auckland FC at Allianz Stadium.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nBen Garuccio of Sydney celebrates scoring a goal during the round 26 A-League Men match between Sydney FC and Auckland FC at Allianz Stadium.<br \/>\nPhoto: Brendon Thorne\/Getty Images\n<\/p>\n<p>The men&#8217;s A-League Grand Final is heading to New Zealand for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>Auckland FC will host the championship decider on Saturday night at Mt Smart, after qualifying as the highest placed team, following Sydney FC&#8217;s upset semi-final series win over the Newcastle Jets.<\/p>\n<p>Sydney FC beat the Jets 4-2 on penalties at Newcastle, after the second leg of their semi-final series finished 1-1 in regular time and 2-2 on aggregate.<\/p>\n<p>Auckland FC had earlier beaten Adelaide 4-1 on aggregate, after an impressive 3-nil away win in the second leg.<\/p>\n<p>Auckland FC is unbeaten against Sydney FC this season, winning the first clash on February 7th 1-0 in Auckland, before drawing 1-all ten days later in Sydney, and then 2-2 on April 26th, also in Sydney.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Reuters with additional reporting from RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Garuccio of Sydney celebrates scoring a goal during the round 26 A-League Men match between Sydney FC&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-431272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}