A-League boss Greg O'Rourke revealed the competition's current plans to host the 2021 A-League Grand Final between Melbourne City and Sydney FC next week.
City relied on their youngsters to beat Macarthur FC 2-0 despite the semi-final controversially moving to Sydney, near the home-turf of their opponents, due to Melbourne's COVID lockdown.
O'Rourke didn't rule out moving the 2020/21 A-League Grand Final to Sydney despite City's rights as premiers to host the event, saying that the competition would follow the same process in negotiating a venue that it did with the semi-final.
That will almost certainly mean no Grand Final behind closed doors - which will rule out Melbourne under the current COVID rules - however those rules could change this week.
Whether the Victorian government would allow a 25% capacity, as the A-League attempted to negotiate for this week, and whether that would be enough to stage the event, remains speculation.
"With Melbourne City now having the right to host it is our intent to find a way for them to play at AAMI Park next Saturday night," O'Rourke said.
"We'll go through the same process we did this week to try and have Melbourne play their semi-final at home, which was to have a number of options on the table.
"We had 25%, 50% and above. We'll speak to the Victorian government and try, for us of course, to get the maximum crowd possible.
"It is quite difficult because today, it is still zero inside the metro CBD. As to where it goes after that, we haven't decided."
O'Rourke also confirmed that multiple state governments around the country have already offered to host the grand final if Melbourne can't.
Given Sydney is currently facing its own COVID uncertainty - and the decision would cause a major backlash - that makes a Sydney venue unlikely at the current time.
He said the competition would need to know Victoria's response by Tuesday afternoon.
"A number of governments have spoken to us about taking the grand final away but that's still a distant possibility for us," he continued.
"We really want to push everything we have to see this grand final happen in Melbourne."
As for the possibility of hosting the grand final in regional Victoria, O'Rourke said rules around travelling for events had made that decision untenable previously.
"Well again it depends on the rules," he said.
"We asked for this semi-final for this game and we were told that we could but the crowd couldn't come from the city, it could only come from the region.
"So by doing so would have been effectively a closed venue. Depending on the advice today and tomorrow from the government will depend where we put it."
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