Melbourne Victory can confirm that Zin\u00e9dine Machach has been released from his contract with the Club on compassionate grounds with immediate effect.<\/p>\n
Joining the Victory in 2023 after stints with clubs in Europe including Marseille and Napoli, Machach quickly became a fan-favourite after hitting the ground running in Australia, featuring in back-to-back Grand Finals and an Australia Cup Final.<\/p>\n
Earning the \u2018Velvet Sledgehammer\u2019 tag for his elegant but powerful playing style, Machach\u2019s first game in navy blue included an impressive show of strength, followed by a slick finish to seal all three points over Sydney FC at Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Frenchman would finish out his first campaign with seven goals and five assists in the league, helping Victory reach the A-League Men\u2019s Grand Final.<\/p>\n
Zizou then continued to excite fans throughout the 2024\/25 season, and played an important part in driving Arthur Diles\u2019 side forward.<\/p>\n
The attack-minded midfielder finished his second season at Victory with seven goals and six assists in the league, and has been widely recognised as one of the competition\u2019s finest players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will look back on my time in Melbourne with fond memories,\u201d Machach said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a pleasure to represent the Victory and I would like to thank the Club and its fans for making me and my family feel welcomed since I joined. I am sad to be leaving, but this decision is the right one for my family and I appreciate the support I have received from the\u00a0 Club in making this decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melbourne Victory Director of Football John Didulica spoke highly of Machach and thanked him for his contributions to the Club.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cZin\u00e9dine has been a special player and person for us over the past two seasons. He took to the league exceptionally well and played an important part in producing many memorable moments for the Melbourne Victory.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWhilst we are terribly disappointed to lose someone that we are so close to, we know that Zinedine\u2019s most important roles in life are that of father and husband, so we support his decision entirely to move closer to family for personal reasons.<\/p>\n
As we say farewell to Zizou, we have no doubt that with the talent we currently have and the players we are looking to bring in, we can go one better this season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne Victory can confirm that Zin\u00e9dine Machach has been released from his contract with the Club on compassionate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[32406,64,63,44011,27013,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-52620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-a-league","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-isuzu-ute-a-league","12":"tag-melbourne-victory","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}