New Melbourne Victory coach Giovanni Savarese has promised his team will play an aggressive brand of football and adopt a “winning mentality” in the club’s search for its first piece of silverware since 2021.

The four-time A-League champions haven’t lifted a trophy since winning the Australia Cup five years ago.

Since then there have been near misses, with Victory losing successive A-League grand finals in 2024 and 2025.

However, near enough isn’t good enough for a club of Victory’s stature, with Venezuelan mentor Savarese charged with the task of returning the Melbourne club to the top of Australian football.

“I knew the club, and I knew the history of the club,” Savarese said in explaining why he jumped at the chance to interview for the head coaching role when asked by an agent if he would be interested in the position.

“It’s been great to be here. It’s only been three weeks, and I’m sure I’m going to learn a lot more, but so far it has been a very good experience.”

Before being appointed as the replacement for ex-Victory boss Arthur Diles, Savarese’s previous coaching job was with American Major League Soccer club Portland Timbers, where he was in charge from late 2017 to August 2023.

“I took a little time to be able to come back to coach, but it feels natural – I feel I’m back where I need to be.” he said.

“It’s something that I love. It’s a passion for me to be a coach, and I’m glad that I’m doing it in a beautiful city with a beautiful club with people here that every day I meet them, I see how good they are.

“Everywhere you go, you’ve got to face things that you need to be prepared for, that are going to be difficult.”

Savarese, 55, said his preference was to let others speak about him as coach rather than give a self-appraisal.

However, he described himself as the type of mentor who liked to “pay attention to a little bit of everything”.

“Everything matters, from the tactical side, to giving the coaching staff the chance to provide the best of themselves because they’re good at what they do, but at the same time put a team on the field that is strong, has a good mindset, is competitive, and has a winning mentality,” Savarese said.

“When we step on the field, we want to be the team that is the aggressor, that goes at teams, but we’re going to do that with balance and we’re going to do that with the players knowing what the game asks them to do every moment that we’re on the field trying to get the results that we want.”

The next “result” Victory is targeting is a win in Saturday night’s Australia Cup round-of-16 clash against Western Sydney Wanderers at Marconi Stadium.

Apart from chasing Cup and A-League glory during the 2026-27 season, Victory is also keen for continental success in the AFC Champions League Two competition.

“When you compete at the highest levels, you have to compete in different competitions and you need to know how to manage it,” Savarese said.

“We’ll try to manage it the best that we can. We want to be in the most competitions possible because it means that we are doing well.”

Originally published as New coach Giovanni Savarese pledges ‘winning mentality’ in silverware hunt for Victory