Terry Antonis looking forward to playing again for Sydney FC after injury and Parma transfer collapse Sydney FC signing Richard Garcia unveils the Sky Blues' 2013/2014 kit. Terry Antonis is looking forward to getting back on the park for Sydney FC. AFTER a winter of discontent in which his thigh muscle ruptured, he missed out on a World Cup and a dream move to Italy collapsed, you might expect Terry Antonis to be full of bitterness at the twist of fate involved. Instead the 20-year-old is just grateful that despite what coach Frank Farina calls a "horrendous" injury, Sydney FC took Antonis "back with open arms" as the player himself puts it. Now Antonis faces weeks more in careful rehab with Farina declaring him "no chance" of being fit for the start of the new season - at the very point he hoped to be making inroads at Parma in Serie A. For months he waited for the Italian side to consummate the four-year deal he signed in April by paying the agreed transfer fee, "a pretty tough period" that only officially ended with the closure of the transfer window on Tuesday. "To be honest, I didn't know what was going on," Antonis said yesterday. I went over there [to Parma in April], did the paperwork and came back. Then Sydney were trying to talk to them, get the transfer payments done. But I was speaking to Tony [Pignata, FC's CEO], and he said no one had heard anything. In the end nothing came through, but I'm happy to be back here - from the beginning Sydney have done everything right. I was a bit upset, but what can you do about it? And I'm really happy coming back to Sydney, I've been here since I was 16 and they took me back with open arms. All the while Antonis was recovering from a damaged rectus formeris - a deep-lying thigh muscle - that tore two days before the Young Socceroos were due to depart for the U20 World Cup, Antonis as their captain. "I tore my cartilage before but this is worse - I've been out now for three months so it's been pretty frustrating, especially with everything else that's been going on," Antonis said. When I did it, it was really painful but now it's getting better. It was a pretty tough period but I had good people around me, positive people, and that helped me a lot. Coming in every day for physio, even though no one knew what was happening, Sydney still took me in. I don't want to rush it - I'm young and I don't want to end up with an ongoing problem, so we have to get it right. I trust the physios and the doctor here, so I'm following their advice. Nor will Sydney allow him to rush it, with Farina revealing how bad the injury was. "He's suffered a horrendous injury, it's a lot worse than a lot of people realise," he said. We've had specialists look at it, and say they've never seen anything like it. So he's got a long way to go to get back to where he was. It's great for us to have him here for next season but we have a duty of care to him to make sure he's 100% before he tries to come back. He's a great young talent and I thought he finished last season, the last six or seven games, really strongly as one of our best. We're happy to have him, in fact I never wanted him to go. I told him I was keen for him to stay another year. But if he comes back too early there's a chance he could miss the year - you don't want any young player to go through that. The world was his oyster at the end of last season - the [U20] World Cup to look forward to, Parma. But the injury being a particularly nasty one has put him back a long way, and we have to be very careful with him. Not a chance.