2021–22 A-League Men

The 2021–22 A-League Men, known as the Isuzu UTE A-League for sponsorship reasons, was the 45th season of national level men's soccer in Australia, and the 17th since the establishment of the competition as the A-League in 2004.

Melbourne City were the defending champions and premiers, having won their first titles respectively the previous season. They retained the premiership, but lost the Grand Final to first-time grand finalists Western United.

Clubs
Twelve clubs participated in the 2021–22 season.

Foreign players
The following do not fill a Visa position:

1Those players who were born and started their professional career abroad but have since gained Australian citizenship (or New Zealand citizenship, in the case of Wellington Phoenix);

2Australian citizens (or New Zealand citizens, in the case of Wellington Phoenix) who have chosen to represent another national team;

3Injury replacement players, or National team replacement players;

4Guest players (eligible to play a maximum of fourteen games)

AFC Champions League qualification
Due to the re-formatting of the AFC Champions League to have an inter-year schedule from September (northern hemisphere autumn-to-spring) instead of an intra-year schedule (northern hemisphere spring-to-autumn), the qualification for the 2023–24 AFC Champions League was changed. The single qualification spot for this competition goes to whichever of which of the Premiers for the current season or the following season accrues the most combined points over both seasons. Melbourne City won the Premiership in both the 2021–22 and 2022–23 seasons, thereby automatically qualifying for the Champions League.

Format
The finals series, which ran over three weeks, consisted of the top six teams from the regular season. In the first week of fixtures, the third-through-sixth ranked teams played a single-elimination match, with the two winners of those matches joining the first and second ranked teams in two-legged semi-final ties. The first and second placed teams chose whether they would play home or away in the first leg. The two winners of those matches meet in the Grand Final. This season was the first to use this format.

Semi-finals
Summary


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Matches

Western United won 4–2 on aggregate.

Melbourne City won 2–1 on aggregate.

Annual awards
The following end of the season awards were announced at the 2021–22 Dolan Warren Awards night on 26 May 2022.