International priorities

Bringing some of the key points in this discussion over from the Tyler Boyd thread in Kiwis Overseas, as I think it's a subject that could do with a bit of robust debate and one (at least in explaining the All Whites' schedule) where NZ Football could do better engaging proactively.

djtim3000: How the fudge do Curacao, of all teams, get to play in a mini-tournament in Asia while the All Whites do nothing? That sort of shark should be bread and butter to NZF. Beyond belief. Sorry off topic but the lack of games for the national team really gets to me.

andrewvoerman: Curacao, of all teams, aren't sending teams to the Fifa Women's World Cup, the Fifa Under-17 and Under-20 men's World Cups, the Panda Cup (to prepare for the Fifa U-17 World Cup, the OFC Under-16 and Under-19 Women's Championships, the OFC Olympic qualifying tournament, and the Pacific Games (to prepare for the Olympic qualifiers) this year, all of which are more important than the All Whites playing this June, a year out from their next competitive fixture.[/quote]

el grapadura: Is there even going to be a 2020 Oceania Nations' Cup? Not much point to it without a Confeds Cup, and a huge cost for everyone involved. [/quote]

coochie: Perhaps the real debate should be where is that money better spent to grow the game, and esp the profile.

What is the real value of the expensive OFC underage tournaments. By that I mean player development. Limited according to Declan and others. In the girls/women's space virtually nil, where the other OFC Nations are woefully weak.

Sure they lead to qualification for the various age group World Cups. But again what are the value of those? Have many NZ players starred at these enough to get pro gigs? Remember Tuiloma as one. Gleeson another.

Maybe just scrap all those sides. Concentrate on top quality coaching whether it be through FFDP (womens/girls), Ole or whatever and just develop top quality Kiwi talent that way. With the rationale that if you are good enough, you'll make it anyway.

With money saved, try develop quality regular programmes for AWs & FFs. For example pay FFA some cash to lure the Socceroos to Auckland for a game this June verus an AWs side (sure minus MLS contingent & those injured). But could still feature Rojas, Wood, Marinovic, Singh, Barba, Lewis, Rufer etc. Mike Boxall, Tuiloma, Smith & Wynne may even scrounge a week off from the MLS. Recuperating Thomas & Reid to sign autographs for the kids.

It's a tricky, complex situation driven by a lack of funds and other stuff as AV pointed out. But the situation deserves some introspection, for what's best for NZ Football. It's just sharkhouse we never see the AWs play big games in NZ.

The AWs are still football's major shop window. Them and the Phoenix. Without the AWs playing some quality/high profile games in NZ, each 4 year WC cycle the game will NEVER achieve it's potential in NZ. The young kids are crying out to see their overseas based idols like Wood and co up close.

You have a guy scoring for fun in the highest profile league in the world the last 2 years, yet in that time he’s played 20 mins (off the bench against Peru) in NZ!! Worst football marketing campaign ever.

Again it's tricky for many reasons, but the current setup is hugely frustrating.

Of course if AWS did become part of an AFC Nations League, with regularish games hope & away against likes of Korea, Japan, China & Australia - all paid for by FIFA, via the huge money that's apparently on the table for a Global Nations League - then many problems are solved.

andrewvoerman (re: OFC) Nations' Cup The primary purpose of the tournament is to determine the best team in Oceania, which has independent merit even if it doesn't come with a trip to the Confederations Cup - no-one's suggesting binning Copa America or the Gold Cup or the Euros or AfCon or the Asian Cup now the Confederations Cup doesn't exist?

el grapadura: It's not the same though, is it? Other continental championships make good money for the respective confederations. If they didn't, their value otherwise would be quickly reconsidered. The Oceania tournaments, be they club or country, are big money losers for everyone involved. If they don't lead to an outcome where there can be some sort of financial gain, they're really a drain on the very limited resource.

Then there was this exchange between coochie and ClubOranje.

"Not saying it hasn't helped, some players get overseas gigs. But it is worth the large financial & resource investment? "

Of course, it is football

"Would a cheaper almost purely domestic, centralised but still high quality national coaching academy setup achieve similar or better?"

Needed as well, not instead of, and already happens ; Ole, Phoenix Academy et el

"Sort of already what's happening with the women's game with the FFDP. Lots of Kiwi female players have already secured overseas contracts through that channel."

Case in point. How many of those DIDN'T play for NZ at any level internationally

"Perhaps try and develop a pathway with a European club (like Ole have started in Sweden), but at a NZF national level for young quality Kiwi players as a pro football opening."

You can't flood one club with that many players....Sweden have kids they want to see at the top too. But there are multiple opportunities.

"All I'm saying is what is happening now with the AWs programme is sharkhouse."

Absolutely agree. But think of it as a rebuild.

"If funds/resources is the major issue (which undoubtedly it is - all the other nations at the U20 WC, will have their senior men's teams playing more than one game in 2019!), then things needed to be reviewed rather than just blindly feeling like we have to send teams to all these costly events, just because we are kings of easily the world's weakest football Confederation."

Age group WCs aren't as costly as you might think....FIFA pay the team costs for tournament. U17s will get some costs paid for current Panda Cup trip. And what we do spend is worth it if U17 sides get to semi finals for example, and U20 sides spank some of the teams they come up against. But we'll only really know as time passes and we see these kids playing professionally or full international honours.

And finally this response from coochie, which is where things left off.

Look CO I agree with a lot of your points. And good luck to your son I hope he makes the U17's for Brazil. But I'm sure as parent you will be proud no matter what.

Also what a fantastic achievement today by the U20's. However that performance owes a shark load more to what those young players have learned in the years at the Welnix & Ole Academies (and earlier), than anything they gained when they were in the NZ U17's (for those that were), or even what they have gained being in camp with Buckingham and co the last few weeks.

The hand of mad hatter Declan esp is all over that scoreline.

Thing is that for example Just, Wilkins, Woud, and soon to be McCowatt are all now in Europe. Cacace & Singh will surely soon follow.

Some of these guys will also hopefully be with the U23s in Tokoyo, and so feature on our TV screens briefly amongst all the other Olympic Games coverage.

But what after that? If they carve out solid careers in Europe or even MLS they will just be You Tube downloads on a Sunday morning.

Some will also feature in the AWs home inter-confed playoff game here in March 2022. But mostly they will very rarely play again on our shores (esp in any non sharkty OFC games), as the AWs barely play, let alone at home.

That's my real lament. Maybe it's the spend at the U17 level that needs review? Keep the U20 programme - but are the U17s really necessary?

No easy answers. 

Under 17s neccesary for a number of reasons.

Firstly when the Federation tournaments were axed a few years ago it reduced for many incentives to be involved with the federation trainings. What was the point was a common question from the kids and parents.  There are a lot of kids who have aspirations to play for NZ and the u17s are one element of those aspirations. The interest and mana of the Fed programmes dropped because of this. Coaches stopped wanting to be involved at Fed coaching level as well because of it. Removing the U17 component hurts players, why do that?

Secondly, we are in the incredibly fortunate position of basically having an easy ride to all FIFA age group competitions and this in turn gives experience possibilities to coaching staff etc, it means we have a chance to get more coaches into the international scene than we would usually get. Also its a first step for international exposure to our kids.

This will most likely be a very unpopular opinion because praising anything NZF do is the work of the devil however the WoF plan at its core addressed some of the key problems. 

Ignore the Admin failures of NZF but look at coaching and coaching resources. In my opinion the single most important thing for us to improve is to improve the overall quality of our coaches. The quality and style of football our u20's played for me is directly related to when the WoF plan came in and its impact on coaching ideas and methods. Those players have all learned to play a particular way partly because of the WoF initiatives and partly because of progress of coaches in private academies and the wider coaching community. The way the team played against Honduras is because of a mixture of WoF as well as other coaching academies, the Nix and various coaches around the country essentially heading in similar directions regarding style, technical ability and quality. (point repeated I know)

Removing the U17s would for me be a step backward with respect to what we are seeing take place. We need pathways, we need aspiration and also the inspiration those teams can have on the younger ones.

Removing U17s would be a horrendous step backwards

Yes our isolation makes it difficult to get AW games here in NZ. Getting all our players with successful professional careers overseas to come here and play pointless friendly games will never happen. There needs to be an incentive like World Cup or Olympic games where those players get international exposure. So I can understand the emphasis on NZF targeting those tournaments to get players together for international games

Of course everyone wants to see Chris Wood and Winston Read playing for NZ.  But locally we do have more talent than we realise and you often don't realise the value of what you have until you lose it. Thats the case with players like Just and McCowat heading to Europe Singh and Cacace likely to follow before too long. I think NZF should be trying to get some AW games in NZ happening using local and A league players, Organise a comp / friendlies against neighbouring countrys like pacific islands, SE Asian countries or a 3 game series against a similar Australian team for example. Call them the Baby All Whites or something. I'd prefer to be cheering on a local AW team of promising talent, then none at all.

The OFC confederation is both a gift and a curse to the All Whites brand. The gift is the pathway to compare against the top age grade teams in the world. The curse is the lack of exposure, quality opposition, resources and corporate interests within the confederation.

If our top domestic teams were able to enter in the Copa Libertadores or the All Whites in Copa America then the profile of NZ Football will be exposed at high volume to a huge audience and if we play good enough then there is potential to get corporate recognition on board to help expand our game to new levels. In OFC there is no such potential with our competitions.

OFC will never be able to get the resources of other confederations so we are tied to the lowest common denominator for confederation competitions. But hey FIFA tournaments! It is only a matter of time until the other less resourced OFC members figure it all out for their youth which is when our easy FIFA pathway will close and we will still be in a dead confederation.

I think AV's first quote in post #1 is the crux of it: Where is the return on investment in AW games just now with no upcoming competitive fixtures? Compared to return on investment from age groups.

Getting the AWs together also costs a lot more than the age groups. 

Cutting the U17s is cutting the smallest international budget, and is akin to saying let's not spend money on grassroots football because I don't like watching 5 year olds play. It is about bridging the gap. You can't just have kids play local football and then when they turn 20 tell them to go out and qualify for a World Cup; you need to prepare them through the steps.

Biggest spend currently is FF, It would be a brave individual who suggests cutting that budget just now.

I'm enjoying this debate. It if it leads to a better understanding of challenges NZF face, putting together a programme for the AWs that can only be a good thing - rather than just spouting 'where are our AWs matches', every time yet another empty FIFA window passes by.

I'd still say that one AWs game this year (Ireland in Nov) is sharkhouse. Wood & co not playing in NZ for over 2 years is sharkhouse.

This year's June FIFA window is June 3rd-11th. Socceroos play South Korea June 6th. 

I wonder if any thought was given to a 2nd game in that window. Sure there are meaningless friendlies, but NZ v Australia, not so meaningless for many of the players & fans.

AV - is there any news coming out of AFC or OFC, about a Nations League kicking off? Google doesn't indicate any progress at all.

CAF, UEFA & CONCACAF now all have one.

Definitely agree with your first paragraph Sancho, but suggesting any alliance with South/Central America is fanciful stuff.

OFC needs to somehow be aligned with, or just swallowed up whole by AFC.

FFs is to me an interesting case. Putting all that shark with Heraf aside, this team needs to improve, to justify their current level of support. They have a minimum 12 game programme in 2019. More if they get of out their WC pool, or have matches this year post WC.

If they don't as a minimum beat Cameroon, failed WC campaign in my book. They have had plenty of leadup games, and now in Semanni they have apparently one of the better international women's coaches going around. No excuses.

Have a mate who works for one of the national sports funding bodies. Word is the FFs are one of the most difficult groups at his body to deal with, sense of entitlement from some in the senior playing group, and a consistent run of results that don't match their funding level. Of course the whole sports funding is a grey area, how do you judge say the women's hockey team compared to FFs? Which sport is stronger on a world scale etc etc. Still an interesting comment.

The FFs will no doubt easily qualify for the Olympics, through the woefully weak OFC women's confed. But I'd agrue if they don't at least beat Cameroon in France, they shouldn't receive a lot of extra funding from NZF for the Olympics. They will have had their large slice of the pie already in 2019.

Interestingly my mate also noted that dozens of cities in Japan (large & small) are clambouring to get any NZ sports to base themselves in their cities, for training camps etc prior to the Olympics. He made it sound like a real oversupply situation - with most sports just looking to base themselves solely in Tokyo. These cities are all looking to pretty much fund 100% of the costs of any training camps etc.

Hope someone tells NZF this, re U23s and FFs both potentially heading to Japan 2020. One potential way to keep costs down.

Interesting that Australia picked a mainly Aus based squad for there friendly against South Korea. electing to give most of there Europe based players a proper off season. Still a popular squad in the forums tho with fringe players getting an opportunity to impress.

Agree Nations League would be great for the AW's. Haven't heard much about this of late tho.

Probably FFA attempting to keep the first choice's squad overseas clubs reasonably onside into the future. 

Some like Celtic weren't happy when their players were grabbed mid season to go off and play in January's Asian Cup.

Yea the alliance with South America was more in reflection to what almost happened 4 years ago when Sepp Blatter was head of FIFA and what could have been if we really pushed for it. Link

Already qualified. ONC doubled as WC and Olympic qualification

Here's how I see it...

Obviously most national teams in the World are commercially viable, otherwise they would also never play

Therefore, it is up to our national body to find a way to make our national team commercially viable via FIFA subsidies, TV rights, strategic alignments and so forth. 

If our environment isn't helpful, then change it

Quite simply, it's not impossible if everyone else is doing it

Correct and it's not even that difficult sometimes.

Believe the last tournament invite we turned down would have cost us nothing at all.

That's just fudgein dumb

And when you can't be fudgeed taking up a free offer, you probably won't get asked again

Who wants to be rejected when you are the one going out if your way?

So Fiji, Vanuatu and Tahiti are playing a mini tournament together. Why isn't NZ Football part of this too and playing in the islands? Don't even need to bring back our overseas international, create a local team of players to take part.

https://www.oceaniafootball.com/bula-boys-ready-to-take-on-vanuatu-and-tahiti/

Actually note it also includes a women's version as well with Fiji, Singapore and Vanuatu. Not so big for our women's team since they are at the World Cup at the moment.

https://www.oceaniafootball.com/33163-2/

It might be that these tournaments have a requirement that we field our top team - we don’t know. Since we can’t or won’t, then we may not be eligible. It’s not as easy as saying “there is a tournament, we must be allowed to play in it under our own terms”

I'm actually more coming from an assumption that we aren't even trying to be part of these tournaments if NZ Footballs record is anything to go by. 

As JourneyFan posted on twitter, this is becoming beyond a joke that the team aren't seeing any games.

"Meanwhile in 2 days time it will be exactly 1 year since the All Whites played a game and 567 since they last played at home!"

In the case of Malaysia in March, there were reasons why it was not as easy as just taking up the offer because it's there.

I mean firstly it mentions 17 hours travelling from Oceania when Kuala Lumpur is a 10 hour flight form Auckland. Also is there really an issue with having players arrive Tuesday early morning, and playing in the evening the next day? Obviously I'm not an expert on this but it doesn't appear to be as irresponsible as the coach points out - I mean they fly business class and it's a single flight at most for any of the squad not in North America. It's easy to get the feeling NZF just didnt try very hard. But who knows.

Mean while Australia is invited to the Copa América.........

https://globoesporte.globo.com/futebol/copa-america/noticia/australia-deve-disputar-a-copa-america-de-2020-catar-sera-o-outro-convidado.ghtml

Many of them wouldn't fly business class, including those from NZ; arriving and playing the next day is not impossible, but it is not good for player recovery and athlete welfare – there'd be hell raised if there were injuries in such a scenario, and it's not something you want to compromise on for the sake of being able to say you'd played a match. Similar to playing two games with less than 72 hours between them.

It also means no chance to actually train ahead of the game – as you'd only be doing a light post-flight session on the Tuesday – so you're losing a big part of the reason why you assemble in the first place, and compromising your chances of success in the match.

Re: 17 hours v 10 hours, I checked that at the time, and I believe it was a case of wanting to be in KL as soon as possible, but being unable to leave on the Sunday (national league games and Wellington Phoenix). Five extra hours in the air (two of the difference is the stop in Australia) and arriving Monday evening preferable to arriving early Tuesday morning.

If two of the major Asian countries (Aus & Qatar) are committing to their June 2020 FIFA windows, already this far out - would seem sadly unlikely that an AFC Nations League is happening any time soon. If it was happening you would think they would be keeping their FIFA windows free in the meantime.

I note FIFA Congress is in Paris overnight. Should be some updates on progress (or lack of) of Infantino's proposed revised CWC, and touted Global Nations League during that.

If a proposed AFC Nations League doesn't happen, but the unpopular Confeds Cup is still canned - prospects of quality AWs games will look even bleaker.

Please forgive my cynicism, but we appear to possess an encyclopedia of the reasons to not play international matches.