The club has been more than capable of hosting world football's biggest stars – Dwight Yorke, Juninho and Alessandro Del Piero to name three – but harvesting this city's junior ranks has proven elusive.

While the gravitas of signing Graham Arnold was obvious, the addition of Han Berger, direct from the FFA technical director position, was a sign of the club's change of vision. He moved quickly to take another junior guru from head office, Kelly Cross, to head up the club's academy.

Cross was FFA's head of coach education for the past seven years, previously worked at the NSW Institute of Sport and the much-vaunted Westfields Sports High, helping oversee the likes of Harry Kewell, among countless others.

While Cross doesn't start until December, and the academy won't function until next season, he's already excited at building what he hopes will be the nation's number one football factory.

"I've been on level 22 [in the Whitlam Square office block occupied by the FFA] for nine years and I've spent much of that time working hand-in-hand with Han to develop our vision for youth football in this country," he said. "We've put in a lot of hard work to produce the National Curriculum and develop the philosophies that now underpin Australian football. Who was even talking about philosophies five years ago?

"But you miss the day-to-day work with players on the training ground. You miss being at the coalface – watching, teaching, developing juniors, which is ultimately what the job's all about."

The Sky Blues have scarcely contributed to the senior national team in recent years, seemingly more focused on recruiting players from elsewhere in the hunt for short-term success. Cross believes the shift in approach will eventually bear fruit.

"I think when the A-League began it was very much about having a first team and that was about it," he said. "But the club now has a long-term version that stretches all the way down to under-12s. We'll have coaches at every year between there and the senior team and they'll be teaching these boys to be play the 'Sydney FC way'."

Pressed on what that meant, given the club's failure to formulate a consistent and coherent style in the past decade, Cross said it would be about creating a "dominant, pro-active and possession-based style".

"Those are already values the club has in place but we want to actually make it happen. You need to have the knowledge to implement that and we certainly will," he said. "Those technical traits will be the hallmark of the players who come through our system. We want everyone to identify those players as having come through our academy."

Perhaps the most important part of Cross' role will be finding high-level youth coaches. But having helped develop the coaching careers of Tony Popovic, Mike Mulvey, Phil Moss and Rado Vidosic, he's confident there's "already 10 or 15 ambitious coaches out there who are more than qualified to come on board".

The prospect of losing their best young players will send shivers down the collective spine of the local clubs and associations but the club will urge them to look at the bigger picture.

"Those players are now growing up watching Sydney FC and I think they'll realise it's an honour to be in our academy," Cross said. "We just have to build relationships with the clubs. We want them to help us, because this is a club that represents their city, and I think most people already know that."

Cross is hopeful those very relationships will mean the club has eyes and ears across the city, rather than holding open try-outs where players are given a one-off chance to impress.

"The days of the 'sheep trials' are over. We won't be doing that," he said. "We'll be looking at players very closely for a long time before they even get near our academy."