{"id":19290,"date":"2025-09-16T09:04:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T09:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19290"},"modified":"2025-09-16T09:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T09:04:18","slug":"mata-joins-melbourne-victory-ahead-of-new-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19290","title":{"rendered":"Mata joins Melbourne Victory ahead of new season"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Spanish midfielder Juan Mata has signed for Melbourne Victory ahead of the new campaign after spending a season at A-League rivals Western Sydney Wanderers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 37-year-old, who has played for Valencia, Chelsea and Manchester United and was part of Spain&#8217;s 2010 World Cup-winning squad, made just seven starts at Sydney last season and is keen for more playing time in Melbourne.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not somebody that demands game time for just the sake of it,&#8221; Mata told Australian media on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know that coaches have to make decisions based on fairness and I agree with that, (but) I&#8217;m very happy to hear that Arthur (coach Diles) is willing to be on the same page and work together.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I really felt the energy in the club. I really felt that they wanted me here. I am driven and motivated to help this team win trophies and to work with the club as part of a longer-term plan to strengthen football in the country.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Victory were runners-up in last season&#8217;s A-League Finals and begin the new season at home against Auckland on October 18.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spanish midfielder Juan Mata has signed for Melbourne Victory ahead of the new campaign after spending a season at A-League rivals Western Sydney Wanderers.\u00a0 The 37-year-old, who has played for Valencia, Chelsea and Manchester United and was part of Spain&#8217;s 2010 World Cup-winning squad, made just seven starts at Sydney last season and is keen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}