A fair bit has happened since the last blog.
Sydney Olympic has announced the re-signing of 16 players from the 2018 squad:
Paul Henderson, William Angel, Jason Madonis, Niko Tsattalios, Alejandro
Sanchez, Radovan Pavicevic, Hagi Gligor, Jinya An, Thomas Whiteside, Nicola
Kuleski, Riley Woodcock, Zach Mackenzie, Ezequiel Consoni, Jake de Marigny,
Billy Patramanis and also Darcy Burgess.
But like his brother Max, it appears Darcy is off and is heading to Europe to
try his luck, specifically with Spanish 3rd tier club, Unionistas of Salamanca.
So, we will have to wait and see what comes of that.
Apart from those re-signings, the club also announced
a few more signings for 2019, with some interesting names returning to the
club.
Mitchell Stamatellis is back at Sydney Olympic after his 1 season sabbatical at
Hakoah. A good player and a good character who can cover several positions, so
he is a welcome addition to the squad for 2019.
Troy Danaskos, who last played for us in 2015 before having a crack at the
a-league, is back via a couple of detours in Bonnyrigg and Marconi. He did not
set the comp on fire at either of those 2 clubs, so it will be interesting to
see what he dishes up for us in 2019.
Harris Gaitatzis, who chased some coin (and good
on him) over at the un-named for the past 2 seasons is back. He seems to be a
direct replacement for Max Burgess in the No. 10 role and he should have some
good football left in him and no doubt, he likes the idea of having the chance
to win some silverware at Sydney Olympic.
Michael Gaitatzis has also returned after scoring for fun in the NPL 3 competition
last season. In his previous life at the club, he managed to score some big
goals for Sydney Olympic. Who could forget the one night when we all froze our nuts
off down in Gungahlin in the FFA Cup that year.
Although the club has re-signed Sanchez and Pavicevic, you never know what will
happen as anybody from anywhere, can now swoop in and take whichever player
they want, that is the nature of the sport these days. But if we manage to hold
on to both of those forwards, it’s going to be interesting to see where Michael
Gaitatzis fits in to Abbas Saad’s plans.
From what I understand, all the players and coaches caught up only a few days
ago for a get together and will soon ease their way into pre-season over the
next few weeks, before they break for the Christmas/New Year period.
On the Tempe Reserve re-development situation, we will continue to wait to see
what happens on that front. Negotiations are apparently continuing and by the
New Year we should know either way, whether it is going ahead or not.