Sunday, December 17, 2006

Melbourne Victory has won the 2006-07 A-League football (soccer) premiership after defeating New Zealand Knights 4-0 at Olympic Park, Melbourne.

The win takes Melbourne to 41 points, 13 ahead of Sydney FC in second place, with only four games remaining in the regular season. This makes it mathematically impossible for the Victory to be caught.

The regular season consists of 21 home-and-away rounds, with each team playing each other team three times. Each match sees the winning team awarded three competition points, or in the case of a draw, the teams receive one point each. The club at the top of the ladder – with the most points – is crowned A-League premiers, whilst the winner of the Grand Final is crownded champions.

Melbourne Victory have also led the competition in crowd numbers during the 2006-07 season, with an average attendance of 26,512 at the end of Round 17 – 10,698 more than the next-highest, Queensland Roar. The Victory’s attendance of 50,333 at Telstra Dome when they played Sydney FC on December 10, 2006 set a new national record for a domestic football (soccer) match in Australia.

Victory’s premiership also gives them a spot in the AFC Champions League, the premier club tournament for Asian Football Confederation countries. Football Federation Australia become a member of the AFC in January 2006, after moving from the Oceania Football Confederation on January 1, 2006.

Melbourne have been the runaway leaders of the 2006-07 competition, a huge improvement on the seventh-placed finish that they achieved during the 2005-06 season. Their striking combination of Danny Allsopp, “Socceroo” Archive Thompson and Brazilian Fred has yielded more goals than any other this campaign.