Bruno Fornaroli's departure from Melbourne City represents one of the great butterfly effects moments of Australian football. It doesn't fit together perfectly, of course, but if one approaches things with enough imagination, then the pieces aren't too difficult to piece together. It's why he's both still linked to City and so distant, all these years on. And why his place at the vanguard of Melbourne Victory's attempts to keep pace with their crosstown rivals is so fitting.
Believe it or not, City weren't always the unflinching, unfeeling, and unmerciful winning machine they are today. Once upon a time, this was a club that was synonymous not with being that distant object clubs trailed in wake of but, instead, with unrequited promise and an almost supernatural ability to melt down in the moments that mattered the most. "Hearting it," was the not-so-benevolent nickname bestowed upon the phenomena, an ode to the days when they similarly conducted themselves as Melbourne Heart, just with less petrodollar backing and a bit redder.
Fornaroli was the closest thing they had to a club legend before their current era of success, scoring 57 goals across four seasons and delivering them their first piece of silverware in the form of the 2016 FFA Cup. Part of the free-flowing and attacking side that scored for fun and provided the platform for Aaron Mooy to return to Europe, there was a passion and personality there that endeared him to supporters. It was fun.
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However, a clash with then-coach Warren Joyce soon left him on the outer; frozen out of the team and, eventually, having his contract mutually terminated. The striker was just one of several veterans to depart -- Fernando Brandan, Neil Kilkenny, Michael Jakobsen, and Tim Cahill amongst them -- but it was Fornaroli's loss that was particularly felt by the City fan base. Gone was the Prickly Pear they had come to love and in its place was a dour, unappealing side that didn't even have the decency to grind out results. The fans turned, the relationship became irrevocable, and Joyce was shown the door after two seasons in charge.
In his place arrived City Football Group's French fixer Erick Mombaerts. The rest, as they say, c'est l'histoire.
Thus, the saga surrounding Fornaroli's exit in particular undoubtedly played a role in City's rise from sometimes quaint and sometimes hapless underachievers into leviathans. Moreover, if the striker was still playing week in and week out in Bundoora, it's unlikely that City would have made the last-second signing of the soon-to-be greatest A-League Men goal-scorer Jamie Maclaren during the January window of 2019.
Across the subsequent years, City have finally turned into that beast that they so long threatened to become. Some teams in the ALM have money but don't generally spend it in a manner that gets them a meaningful return on investment. Others don't have that much money but still find a way to find diamonds in the rough and develop their own, cheaper talent. Fuelled by the CFG's resources both fiscal and intellectual, Melbourne City are that foreboding combination of both; money, mostly spent well, and with a consistent purpose and intellectual foundation. Don't be surprised if Rado Vidosic's successor as City coach is ALM assistant Petr Kratky or John Maisano, ALW boss Dario Vidosic, or even youth coach Crisidion Krstevski.
How one competes with such a beast is the conundrum not just facing Victory, but the entire ALM. Short-term joy may arrive on a year-to-year basis, as Western United did in 2021-22, but less than a year on from that decider they now sit rooted to the bottom of the table while their vanquished opponents yet again set the regular season standard, seemingly on their way to a third straight Premiership. Victory have gone from treating their lighter-hued foes as an afterthought to be discarded in favour of more worthy rivals to playing catch-up.
It was appropriate, then, that representatives from Victory's new sponsor Bonza Airways were on hand on Saturday evening to watch their upset 3-2 win over City in the latest iteration of the Melbourne Derby. That partnership is the product of Victory's moves towards the stables of American investment firm 777 Partners, whose attraction, beyond capital, was partly worldwide scouting networks and pathways. Sound familiar? Also on hand were Victory director of football John Didulica, who once upon a time helped establish the administrative and organisational foundation that City's football department would build upon, and Victory academy director Joe Palatsides, who turned City's academy into a veritable production line of Socceroos such as Connor Metcalfe, Denis Genreau and Nathaniel Atkinson.
Once, Victory went without signing players from City for so long that it almost felt like it was an unwritten policy not to do so. At the time, it made sense: they were winning titles, and City were Heart in a different colour scheme. But now, they only need to reunite Nick Fitzgerald with Fornaroli and new January signing Bruce Kamau to recreate Joyce's front three, with Connor Chapman also slotting in behind. Captain Josh Brillante was a part of Mombaerts' first squad and played in a Grand Final for City. His skippering Victory once would have been unthinkable.
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On the final day of the January transfer window, Victory announced the signing of a little-known striker from South America in the form of Fernando Romero. That one owes more to the connections of agent John Grimaud and Victory's desire to tap into the underutilised South American market than any 777-bestowed scouting network, but the parallels with City's 2015 move to sign an unheralded attacker named Fornaroli from Danubio, back when Didulica was their football director, are obvious. It's not copying, it's a smart footballing gamble. And City tends to do those.
Hence, it was so fitting that Fornaroli, as well as Brillante, were on the scoresheet in the 3-2 Melbourne Derby win. Part of City's rise, they're now part of Victory's attempts to restore what it sees as the natural order.
Fornaroli's lethal edge has arguably been blunted ever since 2017 when his ankle was snapped during an FFA Cup clash, but he still represents a fearsome competitor and one of the most natural and instinctual talents in the league. Here he was, hurling himself at a cross into the box and, when keeper Tom Glover produced a point-blank reaction save, following up with a desperate header to make it 2-1. That he celebrated with the Victory fans in the aftermath should have come as no surprise. Fornaroli is a player who when the blood begins pumping cannot help but play with his heart on his sleeve.
Derbys are not meant to be played, but to win them. Victory is all that matters 😉.
— Bruno Fornaroli (@BFornaroli) February 19, 2023
Still a long way to go, let's keep on working @gomvfc !! pic.twitter.com/56sQfWQ1Te
Yet a great tragedy of his departure from City is that both have been able to move on so easily. His former club has become one of the finest ever assembled in Australia, while he has gone on to win a premiership at Perth Glory and pull on the green-and-gold shirt of his adopted nation twice. They are still tied on one level but, naive as it may be to express such a view in modern hyper capitalist football, let alone the small pond of Australian football, it shouldn't be this painless for two entities that were once so inextricably tied to now be so emotionally distinct. At least Milos Ninkovic and Sydney FC appear to still have genuine animosity.
"Everyone knows my past and I want the fans to know what this means to me as a Melbourne Victory player," Fornaroli said after scoring. "They need to see my passion from this side."
Of the game itself, Vidosic would joke that he'd taken an exasperated look behind the bench to see if there was a kitchen sink that his side could try hurling in search of a leveller after Saturday's defeat. His side ended the night with more than two-thirds of possession, outshot their opponents 19 to six, and completed more passes in Victory's half than they managed in total. Maclaren likely went to bed on Saturday night, and will for a few nights yet, wondering how he managed to put his 91st-minute header from directly in front over the crossbar and not under it.
But Victory, for another week at least, have kept their season alive. They were dogged, disciplined, and resilient in securing an unlikely triumph. They had chances, and they took them. Lifting themselves off the bottom of the table, they're now seven points back of the finals places with a game in hand and all of a sudden, that game in hand against City -- even if it does come with the caveat that play will resume with their foes leading 1-0 in the 22nd minute -- isn't the foregone defeat it was considered. Coach Tony Popovic says that week-to-week improvement has been evident across the past month.
Beating City has provided Victory a path out of their valley. The real challenge for them and every other ALM side? Doing it again, and again, and again.