Last Saturday at Olympic Village, South Melbourne FC’s senior women’s team gave their senior coach Socrates Nicolaidis a winning send-off with a 1-0 away win over Heidelberg United.

The match marked the final game in charge for Nicolaidis after three very successful seasons in charge, in which the team won consecutive titles culminating in last season’s NPL Women’s Championship, in the club’s inaugural season in the NPL Women’s Victoria League.

Nicolaidis is departing South to head back to the US for family reasons, where he will continue coaching in New Jersey. But he has left the door open on a future return to Lakeside.

Speaking to SMFC after Saturday’s win against Heidelberg United, Nicolaidis said of his immediate football future, “I’ll be working for a club PDA. They’re affiliated with the Sky Blue franchise in New Jersey. I’ll be coaching the U19s there, and hopefully get involved with the professional set up, with one eye always looking at South Melbourne, hoping we get into the W-League.

If everything goes well and Gabby (Giuliano) wants me to come back, and the club wants me back, I’d be back within a whim, coaching in the W-League.”

Reflecting on the highlights of his three-and-a-half years in charge as senior women’s coach at SMFC, Nicolaidis told SMFC TV, “There’s so many good things. Just the love of the players.

They believed in what we wanted to do. It was a tough three years. We played in three different divisions. I actually told the girls before the last game, ‘Do you realise what your percentage winning record is?’ .They had no idea. In the last three years, our winning percentage was 75 per cent. That was something I’ve been really proud of. And they really bought into the type of football we want to play, in terms of keeping the ball, moving it and making it a nice spectacle for the supporters to watch. And then being a part of half a dozen girls being a part of NTC Challenge, Matildas, Young Socceroos Mini Matildas. I’m proud of that.”

He also praised SMFC Women’s football director Gabrielle Giuliano.

“Gabby and her husband Vince have done so much for the women’s side and I hope they continue to do so.”

SMFC has appointed Nicolaidis’s assistant Angelos Koutos as the interim senior head coach of the women’s team for the remainder of the 2018 season.