Melbourne City’s longest serving player Phil Petreski has departed the club by joining Heidelberg United effective immediately.
The 21-year-old utility moves to Olympic Village, having spent the last five years in the youth team of the club formerly known as Melbourne Heart.
In addition to his spell at Bundoora, Petreski has previously had two loan spells with South Melbourne in 2012 and 2013, as well as another with Northcote City in 2014.
The Macedonian youth international gave an indication into his reasoning behind the short move to Olympic Village emphasising the club’s family-orientated atmosphere as one of the deciding factors.
“I decided to join the club because I’ve enjoyed watching them over the years,” said the departing City Youth captain.
“They are a family/fan oriented club with a big fan base. I also believe the squad is good enough to win titles and is a squad full of quality players.”
The decision to join George Katsakis’ men strengthens a squad which is currently plagued with a number of high-profile absentees through injury with Warriors’ FFA Cup run coming to an end this week with a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Green Gully.
A talented junior at several South-Eastern suburbs based club, Petreski featured in the youth ranks of South Melbourne before being selected into the elite NTC set-up.
He had also had trials with Premier League sides Stoke City and Chelsea before signing for Heart ahead of their inaugural NYL campaign in 2011/12 under the tenure of John Aloisi.
From there onwards, Petreski became a regular in the youth team and captained the club to a maiden 2014/15 NYL Championship under for Joe Palatsides, one of the highlights of his time with the club.
“My time at City was something I will never forget,” he said.
“I’ve made so many friendships with players and staff and have enjoyed every minute of it. There was many highlights like playing against Manchester City but captaining the team to winning the league will stay with me as winning the clubs first ever trophy was massive.”
Despite making his senior debut in the club’s glamour friendly against sister club Manchester City in July of last year, the youngster found first-team opportunities hard to come by under John van ’t Schip and is disappointed with these state of affairs.
“I am disappointed not to have featured more with the senior team,” he said.
“I thought I did enough to earn a call up but at the end of the day that’s football and it doesn’t always go your way.”
He made a total of 28 appearances for City in the NPL2 since their inclusion into the competition last year, scoring seven goals in the process – five of which have been scored this season.
Petreski was capped by the Macedonia U21s National Team on two occasions last year – one of which was a 3-1 triumph over the Olyroos – and hopes to eventually feature for the senior side although his immediate focus is with the Bergers.
“Representing your country is what every footballer wants to do and I would definitely love to do that in the future.
“At the moment, I’m going to focus on playing well for Heidelberg and let the national team stuff work itself out in time.”
Petreski is eligible to make his debut for the fifth place Heidelberg this Sunday in their home fixture against the Melbourne Victory at Olympic Village and added “my goals for this season is to play well and do my part for the team.
“We want to win every game we play in and I believe we can challenge for the title with the rest of the boys being confident of achieving this.”
Photo: Matt Johnson