The Western Sydney Wanderers are in full blown damage control after their record 7-0 loss to Melbourne City at AAMI Park on Tuesday night with coach Marko Rudan refusing to attend the post-match press conference to address the biggest loss in the team’s history.
Instead Rudan’s assistant Jean-Paul de Marigny was offered up as the sacrificial lamb in farcical scenes to face the music from the media.
A club spokesperson later confirmed Rudan, who recently re-signed until the end of 2026-27, had not lost his job, but gave the bizarre excuse that he couldn’t attend the press conference because he was in a team meeting at the time.
However, that alibi made little sense because there is never a set time for post-match press conferences to take place. Quite the opposite - they very much work around a coach’s availability after a game and can sometimes take up to an hour after the final whistle to commence.
And it flew in the face of de Marigny’s answer when he was asked if there was a reason for Rudan’s absence post-match.
“Nah. Not really,” de Marigny said.
“Let’s speak about the game.
“It’s pretty simple. I’m here now to ask questions so I don’t think that’s irrelevant at this stage,” he said when asked why Rudan didn’t attend the press conference.
De Marigny also confirmed that Rudan’s snub was not health-related.
Rudan’s failure to front the media was an incredibly poor look coming just 17 days after he completed a three-game suspension for an outburst which questioned the integrity of A-League referees.
Since his return to the dugout, Western Sydney have lost three games in a row for the first time under his reign, shipping 14 goals in the same period to drop out of the top six.
When it was put to de Marigny that Rudan
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