Bleiberg walks out on Gold Coast

Gold Coast United coach Miron Bleiberg has quit the A-League club immediately after feeling chairman Clive Palmer ‘took away his dignity’.

Bleiberg was given a one-match suspension by the club this week after claiming Palmer’s decision to name 17-year-old debutant Mitch Cooper captain was a nothing more than a ceremonial gesture.

The suspension surprised Bleiberg and hit the experienced coach hard.

“I’ll not be back,” Bleiberg said on Sunday. “Clive can take my job, but he took away my dignity. No one can take away my dignity.”

“If Clive wanted to hurt me, he succeeded. If he didn’t mean to hurt me, he made a mistake.”

“According to him, he made the right decision to suspend me. From my point of view, it wasn’t.”

“I respect his decision, but there is no doubt in my mind that the punishment to suspend a coach for a thing like this, after all what we had gone through together, didn’t fit the crime.”

Bleiberg was due to return to his coaching duties on Sunday ahead of Wednesday’s home game against league leaders Central Coast, but it’s now expected assistant Mike Mulvey will take the reins for the rest of the season.

His decision to walk away compounds a tumultuous day for the club that also saw Palmer draw the ire of Football Federation Australia for comments in a Sunday newspaper about the A-League and his own club.

Palmer labelled the A-League a “joke” and said his own club was “insignificant” in Brisbane’s Sunday Mail.