The numbers that matter
The end of Juan Mata's playing career?
Juan Mata said just last week that he had not given any thought to his future behind 2025/26 with a finals campaign front and centre of his mind, but now that's done and dusted (perhaps a bit prematurely), the 38-year-old has got an additional couple of weeks to consider whether to re-sign with the Victory for one more season.
Mata had nothing but kind words for the Victory and the Melbourne lifestyle in last week's interview with AAP, but is certainly now at the age where making a year-long commitment to professional competition is no small ask.
Victory manager Arthur Diles said Mata "knows how the club feels" about wanting him to stay on, but will grant him "the time and space to come up with whatever decision he sees fit".
"I was hoping we could give him more game time so he wouldn't think about it, but now he's going to start thinking about it as of tonight, unfortunately!" Diles said on Saturday night.
"Whether that's his last game or not, I don't know. I hope it's not. Not just for our sake as a club, but for his sake, because I think he's still got a lot to offer.
"That's something and a thought process that he'll have to go through now that his commitments are finished for the season. We'll wait and see how he comes back from that."
Victory captain Roderick Miranda echoed the sentiments of his coach and joked that the club should throw an open chequebook at Mata to stay on.
"I hope that he keeps playing. Secondly, I hope it's with us," Miranda said.
"I think he still has something - not to prove as he has nothing to prove to anybody - but he still has something that he can show us.
"For the fans, for everybody that loves football, he should keep playing for us, but in the end, it's his decision. I know this year was really important for him. He felt really happy with us on the pitch, off the pitch."
Team of the Week
Click here to read more about our Elimination Finals team of the week.
What the managers said
Aurelio Vidmar (Melbourne City):
"It's always hard to take when you take the game that long. It's always a lottery when it goes to penalties, but I must say that I'm extremely proud of the way we played this game today. We had a lot of belief going into today, even after last week's loss, and our intent and intensity and our leadership was first class. It was a tough game of football from both sides but I thought we had a slight edge on them. I reckon we could have got a lot more out of that game after 90 minutes. I think we did enough to win the game and maybe that was the story of our season in terms of not scoring enough goals. That's something we'll have to look at. In terms of our intent and intensity throughout the 120 minutes, I thought it was first class.
Arthur Diles (Melbourne Victory):
"There's only one person who makes (refereeing) decisions and I think he (Lachlan Keevers) got them both wrong. It's just disappointing. In games like that, there shouldn't be controversy from the guy in the middle. I don't think we've ever won a game that he has reffed. You think you'd like to put your best referees in the biggest games. In the end they've picked him because they think he's capable. My opinion differs, but I don't want to talk about the ref anymore. The game is bigger than a referee. It's about the players out there giving their best. He gave his best, but I think he fell short as well."
Patrick Kisnorbo (Sydney FC):
"I think the first half we were pretty disappointing, in terms of the way I wanted them to play. When you look at the whole 90 minutes, the players had to find a different way to play because of how they were putting us under pressure. Our character, our work ethic and our togetherness really showed tonight. As you know with goals, there's usually a mistake or a brilliant bit of football along the way. We had our chance to capitalise and we did. Patty (Wood) has been fantastic all week, along with everybody else. We really dug in when it was difficult, showed a lot of resilience which I'm very happy for."
Click here to read full reactions from all four managers.
Next weekend's fixtures
A reminder that the semi-finals are a two-legged affair, with the top-two finishers - Newcastle and Adelaide - getting the advantage of playing the second leg at home, fully knowing just what is required to advance.
Only once in the past four seasons did those top-two sides both advance to the Grand Final, so be ready for a surprise result or two along the way.
