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Melbourne City FC

Melbourne City Football Club is an Australian professional soccer club based in the South-Eastern region of Melbourne, Victoria. They compete in the A-League Men, the highest division of soccer in Australia, under licence from the Australian Professional Leagues (APL).

Founded in 2009 as Melbourne Heart, the club competed under that name from its inaugural 2010–11 A-League season until the end of the 2013–14 season. It was rebranded as Melbourne City following its acquisition by the City Football Group (CFG) and Holding M.S. Australia in January 2014. In August 2015, CFG assumed full ownership of the club after purchasing Holding M.S. Australia’s stake.

Since their formation, Melbourne City have won three A-League Men premierships, two championships and one Australia Cup (in 2016).

The club operates out of the City Football Academy, located within the Casey Fields sports precinct in Cranbourne East, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne. Melbourne City’s home matches are played at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, known as AAMI Park for sponsorship reasons, a 30,050-seat multi-purpose venue situated in the city centre.

Melbourne City’s youth team competes in both the A-Leagues Youth (last held in 2019) and in the Victorian Premier League 1 (VPL1), the second tier of football in Victoria. Additionally, Melbourne City Women compete in the A-League Women.

After the dissolution of the National Soccer League in 2003, brought about by the Crawford Report, plans were drawn up for a new revamped national competition to begin the following season. Despite the calls for the new competition to feature two clubs from Melbourne, in 2004 Football Federation Australia, opting for a "one city, one team" policy, announced that the Melbourne Victory had won the licence to be the only Melbourne club to compete in the new national competition, known as the A-League. A 5-year moratorium was also established preventing any other expansion sides from the eight original A-League teams' areas entering the competition until the 2010–11 season, allowing Victory five seasons to establish itself in the Melbourne market.

On 1 March 2008, former Carlton Football Club vice-president and businessman Colin DeLutis expressed his interest in a second Melbourne A-League side, with an approach to the FFA to become sole owner of the second licence with the bid name of 'Melbourne City'. FFA chief executive Ben Buckley raised the possibility of expanding the A-League from eight to 12 teams in May 2008, in readiness for the 2009–10 season. Buckley also revealed the existence of a third Melbourne bid tentatively known as 'Melbourne Heart' backed by Peter Sidwell, to compete with the two other bids of Southern Cross FC and Melbourne City.

On 25 July 2008, the Melbourne City bid dropped out of the bidding process leaving the Melbourne Heart and Southern Cross FC bids as the last two bids standing. By September 2008, the Melbourne Heart bid was awarded exclusive negotiating rights for the league's 11th licence, beating out the South Melbourne-backed Southern Cross FC bid. Negotiations continued until Sidwell's group was awarded the licence to join the A-League's 2010–11 season by the FFA on 12 June 2009.

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