Since Hudson has come on board their have been plenty of caps handed out to players at the expense of building experience and a certain team dynamic that has seen guys like Keet, the younger Boxall, Henderson completely overlooked. Whilst I think it's good to cap someone like Henry Cameron who until his injury was playing in a professional environment you have to question a lot of the younger kids in the local comp getting the nod ahead of professionals.
I understand a lot of guys like Smith, Reid pull out often meaning we need to pick some one but I think this is also part of the problem. You could argue that the majority of what would be our best XI now play in Europe and given these guys are our best maybe we should be more accommodating to their needs. I have a feeling we wouldn't see Smith and Reid pull out of a friendly or a training camp if it was in London regardless of what stage of the season it is. Considering the UK has over 100 professional football clubs actually well over you would have to imagine ATLEAST half a dozen would be willing to host an All Whites side. Best case we get a international team but if not its better than nothing. I would consider our best XI as of right now to be:
Gleeson
Roux-Reid-Smith-Doyle
Themi-Keet
Barba-Thomas-Rojas
Wood
Add to that the fact that maybe 80% of the next best now ply their trade as close to the UK as they do NZ:
- Lower league keepers in the UK and Marinovic
- Boxall, Old, F Wynne, in the backline.
- Henderson, younger Boxall, VDB, Tuiloma, Payne, James in the DM role.
- Boyd, Howieson, Cameron on the flanks and AM role.
- Brockie and Bright as the CF
Aside from these guys the only others I can see deserving of a squad in our best 23 would be Moss, Wee Mac, Vincent, Fenton, Lewis, De Vries, and maybe the most in form local league striker at the time and of course Fitzgerald if he was eligible would be starting XI hands down. It might not seem fair for the Aussie based players to have to treck it so often for friendlies but lets face it their respective workloads as in games per season are so much less than the other guys.
Iceland is a good current example of a team without any real depth but they pick a pretty consistent XI which features players from Serie A, Bundesliga, EPL, Switzerland, Ligue 1, Russia PL, Turkey but also a few of the weaker type leagues like Norway, Denmark and Sweden as well as the expanding China. Outside of maybe the top 15 their is very little depth and really without these top players their is just no way they could make the Euros or be one game from the WC in Europe which is pretty crazy considering the population they have. A lot of these guys are relatively young but have a ton of experience. The early 2000's late 1990's Zimbabwae cricket team is also a good example considering that it was almost all white up until 2000 I think and they were drawing from no more than 200,000 people as a population base really they did exceptionally well as almost all were playing at a professional level.
I'm not going to say a South American tie is going to match us with an easy beat for the cup (assuming we get to the final round) and whilst I wouldn't say that any of the nations in this confederation are in decline their are a few who are weaker than they have been in a long time Brazil even making squad selections from the championship. Of course if we get a Brazil or Argentina or I'd say Chile its all over but the other sides are beatable with a lot of local based players making up recent squads and players 30+ in age. Whilst we are looking at a lot of players who will be peaking around the cup time in terms of age at least 25-29 making up a lot of what should be considered our best XI. Any way sorry for rambling on and sorry if this isn't punctuated appropriately I am on my phone at the airport. But what do you all think is it better to focus on a smaller group to get us to Russia ? considering we rarely seem to have more than a dozen and a half players at pro level at any one time. Or should we be dreaming of Qatar already and handing out caps like free pretzels ?
