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Brighton’s head coach has led team to Wembley date with Manchester City despite losing his father four months agoGrowing up in Brisbane with a big time difference to London, Dario Vidosic loved being allowed to stay up past his bedtime to watch a big Wembley final on television next to his father, Rado, before trying to recreate a great goal with him in the garden the following day.On Sunday, Rado will not only be in the Vidosic family’s thoughts but in the hearts and minds of everyone associated with Brighton as the team walk out at Wembley for the Women’s FA Cup final against Manchester City to try to win their first major trophy, four months after Rado – who was working as the women’s team’s head of coaching – died from cancer.“He’s always in my thoughts,” Dario, the Brighton head coach, says of his father. “I know he’s always been there for me, from when I was a very small child. He’d be working all day, but he’d always make effort to play with me, to be in the back garden and take me out and kick the ball around and just help me, and it was the same as a coach.“It was very sad to see what he went through [with cancer]. But even through that, he still taught me some valuable lessons. When something feels like it’s going to defeat you, he still never gave up until the very, very last moment. He was still fighting it, still trying to get up, still trying to move, not letting it beat him. Even in his final moments, he still taught me so much. He showed me a strength that I didn’t know was possible.“I’ll take that with me, not just to Wembley, but in every moment in life. Whenever it feels like it might be a bit tough, I know I haven’t gone through anything that I can say has been ‘tough’. So, irrespective of what happens [on Sunday], it’s a day that I’m sure he’ll be proud watching the girls and watching the game unfold, I know he’ll be there with us and hopefully we can give him something to celebrate.”Brighton appeared to channel some of that never-give-in attitude during their semi-final when they recovered from two goals down at Liverpool to win 3-2 thanks to a roaring second-half comeback and a 95th-minute winner from the substitute Nadine Noordam. It sent them to their first major women’s final and felt like third time lucky, coming in Brighton’s third semi-final in six years.Vidosic has frequently spoken about wanting to win trophies for Brighton and they will go to Wembley with real intent against a side they beat when they most recently met in the Women’s Super League in April. Brighton won their FA Cup quarter-final at Arsenal, further showcasing their potential to cause an upset.“It is a fantastic achievement,” Vidosic says of reaching the final. “And [because of] the teams that we had to beat to get to the final, I think that has to be celebrated, but only the winner is remembered, so it is an opportunity for us, and I want to be the part of the history, to be the first [Brighton] team to bring a trophy back. It’s most important to enjoy it, not to feel any stress about it. And it’s normal to have those nerves that matchday will certainly bring.”The 39-year-old former Australia midfielder’s wife and children will be at the match. The Vidosic family has known many coaching triumphs, with Rado leading Melbourne City’s women’s side to an A-League double in 2020 during an extensive career coaching in Australia, which also included securing trophies as Ange Postecoglou’s assistant at Brisbane Roar 15 years ago. Dario played under the former Celtic and Tottenham coach for Australia and, when appointed by Brighton in 2024, thanked Postecoglou for providing a reference that helped convince the club to hire him.Brighton’s strong backing for women’s football was an attraction for Vidosic and was exemplified last month by the publication of the club’s plans for a purpose-built women’s team stadium on land adjacent to the Amex Stadium, designed to suit WSL fans and female athletes. It is due to cost about £80m and to have an initial capacity of 10,000.“It was a very nice moment,” Vidosic says. “It’s something for our younger players, in the academy and for girls aspiring to be professional footballers, and it just really shows them what is possible. It now fills their dreams, that they see that stadium that they can play in. The younger ones in particular, when they go in the garden or when they’re playing football at their school, they can have these scenarios in their mind, scoring potentially the winner in their new stadium. It’s very exciting and I’m very happy to be part of a club that’s really pushing the women’s game and taking it to new levels.”Last year Vidosic told the Guardian he wanted his team “to be the best of the best” and the club’s vision aligns with his aims. A victory at Wembley would be the next key step towards realising those ambitions, and perhaps somewhere in Brisbane there will be young parent-and-child duos sitting on the sofas watching and imagining following in Vidosic’s footsteps.

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FA Cup final victory against Brighton would make it a perfect month and the squad are hungry for more successSecure your first league title for a decade? Tick. Extend your Golden Boot-winning striker’s contract. Tick. Lift a first Women’s FA Cup since 2020? Pending. May 2026 has gone swimmingly for Manchester City and they are hoping it will get even better.Once you get that sweet taste of long-awaited success, you want more, and coaches will tell you it is not reaching the top that is the hardest part, but staying there. Keeping hold of your best players is job No 1 in that regard, so persuading Khadija “Bunny” Shaw to perform a remarkable U-turn and stay for another four years was vital.The Jamaica striker, who scored 21 times in 22 league games this season, had signalled firmly to the club she had decided to leave, because other teams were offering more lucrative contracts and talks with City had broken down. The late intervention of senior management from the men’s arm of the club to ensure Shaw’s contract requests were met led to her change of heart. Shaw had made clear her preference was to stay and the club realised not only the value of keeping her, but the potential cost of her playing for a direct rival in Chelsea.Shaw’s exit would have been a major momentum-killer. Her mic-drop-style reveal that she was staying, presented on stage during Monday’s trophy parade in Manchester in front of thousands of overjoyed fans, signalled that the club are serious about trying to build a winning machine and perhaps even challenge for a first European title.The first stop is Wembley, where they face Brighton on Sunday when victory would land their first league and FA Cup double and first two-trophy season since 2019, when they triumphed in both domestic cups. It would also be their first FA Cup success in six years and their first in front of fans for seven years, because their extra-time victory over Everton in 2020 was played behind closed doors during the pandemic.City will not have it all their own way against a Brighton side who beat them in the league in April and have been in tremendous form since mid-March, but the ambition of a confident City team, buoyed up by Shaw’s deal, is clear.“Because we’ve won silverware, there’s more hunger there to win even more,” the midfielder Laura Blindkilde Brown said. “We were in the Champions League two years ago and we did well there and now it’s about trying to push on there and hopefully win that as well.”Perhaps the hardest thing for City in the fortnight since they lifted the WSL title has been finding a balance between celebrating and preparing. “We’re just trying to separate both, celebrate first and then really turn our focus on to Wembley,” Blindkilde Brown said.The 22-year-old has been one of the team’s success stories this season and something of an unsung hero, playing in 20 of their 22 WSL games, starting 18 and demonstrating a maturity beyond her years as she controlled games from the holding midfield role. “I’ve really tried to put a mark on the season and make a name for myself,” she said. “We’ve really built connections in the midfield and every game I’m just improving more and more and there’s still so much for me to improve.”The England international’s progress is another example of why the future looks so bright for the new champions and the core of their team looks capable of challenging on multiple fronts next term in their second season under the head coach, Andrée Jeglertz. There were four City players in the WSL’s team of the year, Shaw, Yui Hasegawa and Vivianne Miedema joined by the right-back Kerstin Casparij, who topped the league assist charts.“All the puzzle pieces fitted together this year and also with Andrée coming in and with some incredible recruitment, players-wise, it all just fit; it’s felt so good,” Casparij said at last week’s WSL Football awards in London, where she was accepting Shaw’s WSL player of the year prize on herbehalf.Casparij does not want that to be the final trophy she gets her hands on this season. “To win a double, after so many years, would be absolutely incredible,” she said. “That’s definitely a goal we have and we’ll give everything to realise that goal.”