“I don’t know,” he said about his future with the club, admitting he had been frustrated by his lack of game time. “We’re having conversations, and I’m thinking about it now. I need to also think about my family and personal decisions, but let’s see. I love being here, I love the way that the Australian football fans have embraced me and my family, and all the respect that they show, so I enjoy very much that part of my stay here.” Though his playing future is unresolved, Mata – who won the World Cup with Spain in 2010 – is thinking more broadly about his association with the A-League. In November, he was announced as a minority owner in San Diego FC, a new Major League Soccer expansion club which entered the competition this year. The club’s ownership group is led by British-Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour, who bought Right to Dream – a Ghana-based football academy which is associated with Mata’s charity Common Goal – in 2021. Right to Dream has since expanded into a multi-club network also including Danish club FC Nordsjælland, where Mata trained to build his fitness before joining the Wanderers, and Egyptian outfit FC Masar.