In the 20 minutes it takes him to walk from his Richmond home to AAMI Park, John van ‘t Schip likes to think. About the game that awaits, the week’s preparations and the key points he needs to reaffirm.

“You just consider there are last things that you want to say to the players, or to certain players. [But] if you still have to talk a lot before the game, then I think you missed out on things during the week.”

Since Melbourne Heart’s inaugural coach answered his old club's SOS over the summer, the message he’s been trying to drill in to his players has been a simple one: express yourselves.

“Start playing football. Play free. That’s the reason why, when you were a little boy, you started to play, because you wanted to show your talent and you wanted to enjoy [yourself], and that’s what you should have at this level as well.

“Within that, of course, we will have a certain team discipline and roles that you have to do. But within that, there’s still a lot of freedom to express the player that you are, and that’s what I try to reinforce in my sessions.”

It’s a message which transformed the Heart from one of the biggest losers (or, technically, non-winners) on record into a team that dropped just two points in seven matches.

It wasn’t all just down to a change in mindset though. Van ‘t Schip switched to a three-man midfield, and started showing faith in the likes of Iain Ramsay and Ben Garuccio.

But it was when their marquee man-mountain, Orlando Engelaar, finally made his long-awaited debut for the club that everything changed. His first run in the red and white triggered an extraordinary change in fortunes, and John Aloisi may very well still be leading the club had Engelaar been able to get on the pitch earlier.



“He has special kind of things in the way he’s playing. And he’s not even on his top level right now, because he’s coming back from injury and he didn’t really have a pre-season. So for sure, [having him fit] would have changed things a lot, I think. But it’s football. You always have to deal with those kinds of things. It was a big loss for the club.”

Of course, you could also link Heart’s sudden outbreak of showpiece football to their acquisition by Manchester City the following week. With Van ‘t Schip on the sidelines, Engelaar on the pitch and City CEO Ferran Soriano in the boardroom, it all started going gangbusters.

Prior to the takeover, Heart had equalled the league’s longest winless streak. In the month or so following the announcement, they were so dominant that being held to draw looked like a underachievement. City, by contrast, went into the takeover having lost just two out their past 26 matches, and came out of it barely able to win every second game.

The old order has since been restored, and for Van ‘t Schip, it’s not a case of City’s charm wearing off or emotions no longer propelling his team to victory.

“We should not exaggerate those things. The influence of City we have to see more and more next year. This year, we had to deal with the same players, the same circumstances, the same training facilities, so I don’t believe in that too much.

"It could be a percentage or whatever, maybe it’s given us a little bit of a change. But bringing that back every time to the influence of City ... I haven’t seen that.

“I don’t see the difference in the effort the boys are putting in, or in the way that we are playing. Things went our way [for a while] and now, actually, we are having a period where we are getting [in front] and then we give it away.

“You look at the game against Brisbane, we really played well the first half. Dominating. And also against Adelaide. They’re two good opponents, the best teams at this moment in the league, and we were really matched up against them.

“We were all happy, actually surprised by the take-over. Nobody really expected it. But, of course, the positive thing is the way they came and they explained and the talks that we already had, so we’re very excited about the coming period.”

To put the size of the takeover into context, City pay their maligned ‘keeper Joe Hart as much per season as they did for Melbourne Heart in perpetuity, but it was a sale that not even the Western Sydney wunderkinds could trump.

What it means for the club long-term is still unclear. A change in name and colours is an option, and one Van ‘t Schip is unwilling to share his thoughts on. As for the possibility of picking up some young guns from City’s overflowing talent pool, he says there are no names on the table yet.

“We are going to go to Manchester and have good talks with the people there, talk about certain types of positions, and then we’re going to see what type of players we can get.”

There’s also been talk of City sharing their coaching knowledge with the club, if only to skirt around Uefa’s Financial Fair Play regulations. Has that happened?

“No. Because I’m the coach. I’ve got my philosophy, I’ve got my vision, and that’s the same way Manchester City wants to play, a beautiful kind of way of football, possession way of football, and that’s also the reason we agreed to work on together and continue this with a new contract [which has been extended until mid-2017].

“But of course, if they start to work here with the youth academy, it’s good to have coaches in who can instruct the coaches here, and we need of course in all of Australia a lot of coaches to instruct the younger players.

“And I’m going there, and I’m very happy to learn. We still all can learn from each other. That’s why I’m excited about this time that I’m going to have there in a few weeks.”

Come Saturday, Van ‘t Schip will make the walk to AAMI Park for the final time this season. In his head, he’ll be going over another of the messages he’s been giving since his return: play for the future.



“Saturday we get a new game against Western Sydney, and we all want to finish well ... because we want to continue, you know. This is not the last game. It’s not the end of a project. It’s just the start, and that’s how we’ll approach it.”