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Opinion
There’s something fitting about a coach disliked by many leading a club with a largely unloved fan base to one of the most one-sided Sydney derby victories in recent memory.
Western Sydney’s 4-0 demolition of Sydney FC on Saturday night was a Marko Rudan masterclass.
Happy to watch his city rivals get all hot and bothered after winger Brandon Borrello labelled the Sky Blues “bang average” following Sydney FC’s 1-0 win in the corresponding fixture in Parramatta, Rudan simply had his team respond where it counts – on the pitch.
His Wanderers side were clearly the better team even before Borrello slipped a sublime through ball to Amor Layouni, with the erstwhile Tunisian international squaring the ball for Kusini Yengi to tap home into an empty net.
Yengi’s subsequent decision to cop a yellow card for removing his jersey to bait The Cove said everything about his team’s confidence – this was a derby the Wanderers never looked like losing.
Rudan is a much smarter coach than many give him credit for.
He was quick to discard Sulejman Krpic when the big Bosnian striker scored just twice and laid on zero assists in his 13 A-League appearances, and the much-travelled Sweden-born Layouni is a vastly superior replacement.
The Wanderers were cruising when Milos Ninkovic played another slide-rule pass in for Layouni to toe-poke home, and they killed the game off as a contest when Calem Nieuwenhof drove home from distance just after the hour mark.
Ninkovic was once again booed off the pitch by the Allianz Stadium faithful who used to adore him, but it’s the loss of Nieuwenhof that should trouble Sydney FC fans more.
The industrious youngster has blossomed into one of the competition’s most effective midfielders since switching to the Wanderers and he bossed proceedings against a Sydney FC midfield that was second-best throughout.
Layouni’s second was another work of art from a Wanderers side with who repeatedly sliced through Sydney FC’s back four with ease, and the tricky Tunisian has turned Western Sydney into a side that will give the finals a genuine shake.
But what of Sydney FC? They were dreadful on the night, and how much longer the Sky Blues persist with the under-pressure Steve Corica remains to be seen.
(Photo by Steve Christo/Corbis via Getty Images)
Rudan was one of the first names to go into Sydney FC’s hall of fame, but A-League executives will be relieved to see him masterminding a title challenge across town.
The Australian Professional Leagues will be desperate for the Wanderers to make the grand final in Sydney, if only because it will spare them the embarrassment of watching a decider played out against the backdrop of tens of thousands of empty seats.
Still, we’re getting used to the sight of it by now.
Barely 5,000 fans turned up to watch Melbourne Victory – supposedly the biggest club in the league – down the Central Coast Mariners 2-0 on Sunday afternoon, while a derisory crowd of 2,121 watched Macarthur and Melbourne City play out a 1-1 draw in Campbelltown.
The APL proved they could actually change things by pre-emptively pushing the kick-off time in Campbelltown back from 3pm to 7pm to counter Sydney’s sweltering Autumn heat, so quite why they’re so incapable of walking back from some of their other terrible ideas remains a mystery.
Their latest move was to announce two new A-League expansion sides in the form of Canberra and Auckland in time for the 2024-25 season.
They’ve been spurred into action by Football Australia’s decision to launch a National Second Division which is supposed to complement the A-League – even if it has the potential to steal away market share.
But a little competition is arguably just what the A-League needs.
Western Sydney’s derby win sets up a blockbuster Friday night showdown with second-placed Adelaide United in Parramatta in two weeks’ time.
Hopefully plenty of Wanderers fans snap up tickets for that one, because Marko Rudan will invariably keep on winning whether you like him or not.