Melbourne Victory chairman Anthony Di Pietro maintains the club is heading in the right direction despite the sacking of coach Mehmet Durakovic on Friday morning.
Melbourne Victory chairman Anthony Di Pietro maintains the club is heading in the right direction despite the sacking of coach Mehmet Durakovic on Friday morning.
Durakovic was axed just six months into the job after a poor start to the season which has yielded just three wins from 14 matches.
It is the second big-name departure from the club in as many months after football director Francis Awaritefe walked out on the club in late November.
The board had come under fire in March last year when they sacked dual premiership coach Ernie Merrick after six years at the helm.
And despite the club parting ways with two coaches and a football director in less than a year, Di Pietro backed the board’s management of the club.
“There’s always risks with appointments. We’re proud about the consistency that we’ve had since day one in the business,” he said.
“As a sporting business, you can never have 100 percent success in your appointments.”
“The changes that we have made to regenerate this club – we’re adamant that we are building a club that will be here for a long time and as I’ve said there’s always risk in recruitment and we’re willing to face what’s required to make the changes when they’re required and we’ve been proactive about doing that.”
Di Pietro pointed to other areas of success the club has enjoyed in recent times and backed the direction the board is taking.
“The board and key executives are always responsible for the decision making. What’s important is that we took on a regeneration of this club that is absolutely necessary to achieve the objectives that we have place,” he said.
“We’ve been very successful in the brand development, very successful in the financial sustainability, unfortunately in relation to recruitment there is always risk.
“No matter how deep your due diligence and expert advice you receive there is risk and in this case what we’re doing is being proactive about the change that we need to make and face it.
“It’s okay to sit here and announce the good things, we also have to be responsible and face the difficult things.
“We’ve had more media coverage this year than any time in our history and record broadcast ratings,” he added.
“Following our review last year we’ve made significant changes to the business and we’re in a very positive financial position today.”
“In fact given our financial position this actually enables us to make the change that we’ve made.”
Di Pietro also rejected claims that the decision was a knee-jerk reaction and the fact that they have already all-but secured an interim coach for the remainder of the season suggests that Durakovic’s head has been on the chopping block for quite some time.
“Mehmet’s been under review as a coach all along, there’s been no rash decision making,” Di Pietro said.
“We wanted to give Mehmet every opportunity to achieve onfield success and performance and unfortunately we believe that we’re at a point now where we needed to be proactive about the change.”
Former captain and assistant coach Kevin Muscat will take the reins for Saturday night’s clash against Newcastle with an interim coach to be announced in the coming days.
