After giving his fringe players a chance to impress in a 4-0 loss to Kawasaki in the Asian Champions League, Sydney FC coach Steve Corica has stressed the club will prioritise local talent over the recruitment of foreigners.
Only one overseas player started for the Sky Blues on Tuesday night in the form of Reza Ghoochannejhad, whose loan spell at the club has now come to an end.
Fellow import Siem de Jong will also exit the Sky Blues after his loan stint, while Jop van der Linden’s future in Sydney is unclear after dropping out of Corica’s squad for much of the season.
With Milos Ninkovic and Adam Le Fondre locked in for next season, Sydney’s immediate attention won’t be on replacing their departing foreigners.
“A lot of the foreigners we decide later on in the off-season, so there’s no rush, we make sure we get the right Australian players in first and then the foreigners come last,” Corica said.
“There’s a lot of work going into it, the recruiting, getting the right players in, so I haven’t had a lot of time really yet to think about things.
“We’ll do that in the next week or so.
“To get another trophy, four championships, is something special and next year it’s going to be harder again.”
The Sky Blues ended their Asian Champions League campaign bottom of Group H with three points from their six games.
Despite failing to win a game, Sydney FC were competitive in a number of the matches with Corica left to rue a number of missed chances to pick up more points.
“We’ve had opportunities to win games, we just haven’t finished teams off or we’ve conceded late in games and I think that’s something we’ll learn for next year,” he said.
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