Even the team on the latest podcast can't seem to agree on what to call him and settled for Roo-dan. Which is wrong! I think this clip should settle it.
At about 25 secs he's introduced by the host - who's sitting beside him - as Mark Roo-din.
https://www.foxsports.com.au/video/football/asian-...
In the original Croatian, both vowels are short so are quite tricky for English speakers to pull off. This in turn leads to the stressing of one of the syllables, neither of which agrees with the Croatian pronunciation, but both of which make it intelligible as to whom is being spoken about. If Rudan's non-fussed about it, not sure why we should be. Or why anyone should be castigated for adding their own twist to the original that is difficult for most English speakers to get right.
Yeah! Xactly.
We don't know if Rudan is fussed about it. That's an assumption. The courteous thing to do would be to ask the man himself how he prefers his name to be pronounced, and go with that.
BTW, NZR is currently on a big push to get people pronouncing player's names correctly. Why should we aim for less? Just saying...
I can guarantee you that Rudan has spent the last 30-odd years of his life hearing his last name pronounced in a whole variety of ways, all of them different (some more than others) to how his parents and grandparents pronounced it. And at some point in his life, he just decided that it just wasn't worth giving it too much thought.