In recent times when an A-League club needed a new head coach two phone calls were placed. One was to Ange Postecoglou, the other was to FFA HQ. Who is the best coach out there? Who has shown promise coming through the national team ranks?

The logic behind poaching an Under-17s, Under-20s or Under-23s national team coach is clear – you’re getting a coach with access to the best resources, best facilities and best players in the country. In the microcosm that is Australian football, with few professional head coach roles going around, every time one pops up the same names emerge. Western Melbourne Group need a new coach? Ante Milicic. South West Sydney need a new coach? Ante Milicic. And the reason his name is always first on the list? Because he’s the best credentialed available coach in the Australian system.

In Milicic you know what you get. A character who is not abrasive, whose ego won’t be the cause of massive bust-ups or schisms – either with management, or within the playing group. He’s calm, incredibly professional and hardworking, and under all that has a steely determination and relentless desire to win. Talk to players or staff that have worked around Milicic, and these are the attributes to they mention.

As the right-hand man to both Tony Popovic and Ange Postecoglou, Milicic has worked with two of Australia’s most gifted contemporary managers. And the skillset he has developed – working as a player scout, working closely with video analysts – marries modern football analytics with the old school ways of work ethic and basic toughness that you get from coming up both as a player and a coach through the NSL.

All of this is of course coming from the context of men’s football – with not unreasonable concerns being raised about Milicic’s limited experience in and around the women’s game; after all he has never coached a women’s football team, and now he has been tasked with taking perhaps the most talented generation of Australian footballers ever assembled to potentially win a World Cup.

But amid the current febrile atmosphere of accusation and counter-accusation, of suspicion, rumour and constant innuendo, being an “outsider” to the women’s game becomes a strength rather than a weakness.

Milicic is a clean skin with no agendas other than to coach and to get the very best out of a talented group of players

Milicic doesn’t have W-League club factional alliances – players he has spurned or promoted in the past. He doesn’t owe passionate powerbrokers of the women’s game anything for historical support. There’s no quid-pro-quo. In a sense, Milicic has the best part of being a foreign coach (being an outsider with no pre-conceptions) and a local coach (a fundamental grounding in the realities and challenges of Australian football). He’s a clean skin with no agendas other than to coach and to get the very best out of a talented group of players.

He will come in to the position under no illusions – the stakes could not be any higher. That’s a facet to the tremendous outpouring of frustration and anxiety surrounding the undignified sacking of predecessor Alen Stajcic – this could be the only time an Australian football team might ever win a World Cup. Fourteen years ago supporters of the men’s game were jubilant to have just qualified for a World Cup – having recently beaten the world’s best teams – United States, Japan, Brazil – this squad of players are a genuine shot at the trophy.

That’s not to suggest this was a well-laid plan from Football Federation Australia – as the rancour from the past month has demonstrated, the shock sacking of Stajcic couldn’t have been handled worse by the governing body. Either a good man whose management was faultless has been forced out, or a man’s whose management style was no longer advancing the group was let go and the warning signs were repeatedly ignored, kept hidden or hushed up over preceding years. Neither scenarios show FFA management in a good light.

If we know anything about the upper echelons of FFA, these are profoundly risk-averse people. A lack of vision and ambition became a major fault line between management and former Socceroos coach Postecoglou, so the sacking of Stajcic – without the clear evidence of a definitive cause or sufficient reason – was remarkably out of character. On the basis of what has been confirmed on the public record, at least.

Alen Stajcic, who took the Matildas to sixth in the world, was dismissed last month. Photograph: Francois Nel/Getty Images

With trust in the governance of the sport at a recent low, this appointment couldn’t have been more crucial. Those prominent media voices alleging a gender-based conspiracy against Stajcic made the appointment of a female head coach nigh on impossible – and while that long-held preference may be realised with the next permanent appointment post-France World Cup, for now, neutralising such an accusation is a sound strategy.

Nevertheless, the environment the new coach is walking into remains beset with potential banana skins. A talented overseas coach such as a Vera Pauw, believed to have been on a six-person shortlist for the Matildas job, would take months familiarising herself with the conditions, the challenges, the personalities and the politics of the Australian scene – time the Matildas don’t have if they’re to reach optimal performance.

With schisms inside the playing group exacerbated by the poor-handling of Stajcic’s departure, any new coach is walking into a potential minefield. That assistant coach Gary van Egmond has been retained remains a concern. Given the accusations of favouritism and preferential treatment of certain players that began to dog the Stajcic era, it is simply inconceivable that a father-daughter dynamic is allowed to continue within a professional environment.

But if there is one coach who has the temperament and skillset to navigate the fraught dynamics of Australian women’s football right now, it’s Milicic.

More than that, in Milicic the Matildas may have just found a coach who can truly unlock the potential of this hugely gifted, passionate and determined group of players. A coach that can balance the attacking verve of Postecoglou with the resolute defence of Popovic.

With the Matildas’ results tailing off over the past 12 months, the very best attacking instincts of Sam Kerr, Caitlin Foord or Michelle Heyman can be revitalised. A midfield that boasts some of the best technical footballers we’ve seen – players like Elise Kellond-Knight, Katrina Gorry or Emily van Egmond – can play freely again. And a defence that mixes the vast experience of Lydia Williams and Claire Polkinghorne with the ever-increasing potential of Alanna Kennedy and Steph Catley can galvanise even closer.

The way FFA has arrived at its decision may well have been disgraceful – but with the appointment of Ante Milicic, the governing body might just have found the coach to give Australia their best ever shot at winning a World Cup.