Melbourne City's Nicolas Colazo will miss Tuesday night's Westfield FFA Cup semi-final against Melbourne Victory, while there was tension between the two coaches at the pre-match press conference on Monday.
City coach John van 't Schip confirmed on Monday that Colazo - who is sidelined with an inner-ear complaint sustained in City's Round 1 win over Wellington Phoenix - hasn't improved enough to play Victory, with the Argentine midfielder set to see a specialist on Tuesday to discuss the next step in his recovery.
Meanwhile, Bruce Kamau's availability will be decided up "in the last part" of Tuesday as he battles concussion following a head knock in Friday night's 3-2 loss to Perth Glory in the Hyundai A-League, while midfielder Luke Brattan's hamstring is of no concern for Van 't Schip.
"Kamau has trained this morning, looked good," the Dutchman said.
"Colazo hasn't changed yet, so he's not going to be involved and Brattan is good."
Victory will enter the semi-final with one less day's rest as their A-League match against Adelaide United was held on Saturday night, but coach Kevin Muscat insisted "everyone's pulled up fine".
Muscat was clearly much happier following the 2-1 win in South Australia compared to his mood when Victory were humbled 4-1 by City nine days ago, and the former Socceroos defender underlined the importance of mentality to his team's performances.
"Not too much went right [in the derby], to be honest... our application in relation to what we tried to achieve from the game was nowhere near what's accepted," Muscat said.
"So there was many things, without going into too many details now, but both tactically and with our application there needs to be a severe improvement.
"And especially in that first half, going across to Adelaide, there was a big difference in terms of appetite for the game."
When asked what his review of City's loss to Glory had showed him, Van 't Schip said: "It showed that we were poor at set-pieces... but nothing else, actually.
"I think we still had really good parts of playing, there were other things - as in every game - you want to see improving.
"But let's say that our performance let us down in the two set-pieces."
Adding even more feeling to Tuesday night, van 't Schip ran out of patience with Muscat, starting their joint FFA Cup press conference before the Melbourne Victory boss arrived.
Van 't Schip was seated when the press conference was due to begin at AAMI Park and after asking a number of times for the first question, the Dutchman eventually got his wish, answering five questions before Muscat entered the room.
Victory's coach was clearly peeved by Van 't Schip's decision to start before he arrived.
When asked his first question, Muscat said drily: "Before I answer it, I apologise for being 30 seconds late."
The two coaches' body language throughout the press conference made it pretty obvious neither wanted to be sharing the same room with the other.
While the entire incident was relatively inconsequential, it adds some extra spice to what is already a highly anticipated FFA Cup semi-final on Tuesday night.
