All Whites' Oceania/Asia Confederation Conundrum

With Sepp resigning I guess Martin won't be meeting anyone. With the turmoil in FIFA at the moment NZ won't have a show lobbying for a change for quite some time.

Still nice to see our CEO Football finally admitting that Oceania is a dog and that our future is with Asia. I think we are at the start of a long slow process that will eventually see NZ in Asia....with our without Oceania folding into Asia

About time we fought for whats best for NZ football......5 games in 10 days shows you what a joke Oceania is. Time to leave

I agree with what Andy has said in terms of player welfare which concerns our professional players and their clubs. For the last few years it seems Oceania is not willing to work with us so why should we work with them or remain as part of Oceania? It raises the question, does Oceania really want us to remain in the confederation? And if not where do we go from there? I can only speculate that Asia is unlikely to accept us as well as they have accepted Australia but who knows. All I know is that we are better off without Oceania at this rate and the sooner we get a fresh start the better. Sepp has just thrown in the towel so I can see nothing will be done about it until NZF take action. Maybe we should bring east asian confederation countries into Oceania to shake things up.

Don't think so, NZ keeps OFC alive, if we were gone, maybe they would even lost their spots in age group World Cups, and then obviusly is the money issue

Martin revealed his hand in veiled tones but I suspect it would be to tell the rest of the members in OFC that you could find yourself cut off and sinking...

This is where Martin uses his nouse and tells the next President the kind of shark we have to put up with in the region. The largest/best/richest member and we have zero representation. That is so wrong.

Hudson must be fuming. He's coaching the Olympic side. He finally has a chance to get hold of the squad in a camp situation for the playoffs. Then he finds out the qualifiers are 5 games in 10 days. All games played on the same pitch(which will resemble a Taranaki cow paddock by day two)

I can't see European clubs releasing players for a fiasco like this. Player safety will be compromised.....Can't see Reid etc coming back for this joke.

The whole thing is a now a lottery. NZ will need a big squad and try and rest players for each second game.

I guess one thing positive that might come up from the huge fallout in FIFA , there might be a completely new group running FIFA and they might re-assess the whole Confederation set up and ditch Oceania. Either that or it will go in the "too hard " basket and be allowed to drift for years.

But it looks like officially NZ is starting down the pathway to getting us where we belong.....in Asia.

In the overall scheme of problems facing FIFA at,  a tin pot confederation at the bottom of the world will be so far down the priority list it will be years before it is even looked at

Unless it is part of a whole revamp of the confederations. Who knows what might happen, they might change the whole 1 vote per Country method and change it to confederation votes so the likes of Blatter can't bribe these little countries to maintain power. to give a wider voting representation that might mean a realignment of confederations, break up the big ones like Asia and Africa and bring Oceania into a Pacific Rim type Confederation. fingers crossed.  

That's the FIFA way.

Hopefully, that will change.

For my 2c, if you look at the Asian Federation it is currently split into 5 federations

• WAFF-West Asian Football Federation  (12 members)
• CAFA-Central Asian Football Association (6 members)
• SAFF-South Asian Football Federation (7 members)
• EAFF-East Asian Football Federation (10 members) 
• AFF-ASEAN Football Federation (12 members)

Throw in Oceania (11 members)

I say combine them together and split down the middle.  So you have

• Asia-India = WAFF+CAFA+SAFF = 25 members
• Asia-Pacific = EAFF+AFF+Oceania = 33 members 

Move Australia back into Oceania so we get to play each other more often

Time zone spread across the two confederations is minimised.

Split any FIFA tournament allocation places down the middle, if there's an odd number, have a Asia-India v Asia-Pacific playoff for the last spot.  So Asia-India, and Asia-Pacific would have 2.5 places World Cup places each

FIFA Club = 1 place each i.e. winner of Asia-India Champions League and winner of Asia-Pacific Champions League

FIFA Confederations Cup = 1 place each i.e. winner of Asia-India Cup and winner of Asia-Pacific Cup

Asia-India and Asia-Pacific cup every 4 years, and  each sub-confederation would have their own tournament every 4 years as well.  So the 4 year cycle is ...

• Year 1 Sub-Confederation Cups - Oceania Cup, AFF Cup, EAFF Cup, WAFF Cup, SAFA Cup, CAFF Cup (these act as qualifiers for next years 16 team Confederations Cups so first 5 to qualify)
• Year 2 Confederation Cups - Asia-Pacific Cup, Asia-India Cup (winners to next years FIFA Confed Cup) + start of World Cup Qualifying inside sub-confederation
• Year 3 World Cup Qualifying - Final phase involving qualifiers from each sub-confederation.
• Year 4 World Cup + qualifying if necessary for next years sub-confederation cups.

For Asia-Pacific, have a condition in the constitution that any final tournament has a minimum number of (ideally 3) from each sub confederation.  

So for... 

• 8 team tournament - Host+EAFF(2)+AFF(2)+Oceania(2)+Playoff for last spot
• 10 team tournament - Host+EAFF(3)+AFF(3)+Oceania(3)
• 12 team tournament - Host+EAFF(3)+AFF(3)+Oceania(3)+2xPlayoff for last spot2
• 16 team tournament - Host+EAFF(5)+AFF(5)+Oceania(5)

... ideally 3 from each sub-confederation as then it won't just be NZ,Australia always qualifying from Oceania, but Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tahiti etc will think they have a legitimate shot as well for the last spot.

For age groups, every 2 years there would be a sub-confederation tournament that then feeds into a confederation tournament later in the year that qualifies for the FIFA tournament.

At a club level, probably be a 16 team Asia-Pacific Champions League,  something like A League winner + Phoenix qualify direct for Asia-Pacific champions league.  A league runner-up, FFA cup, ASB Premiership winner etc qualify for qualifying phase with Island champion etc.   Non-qualifiers drop down into a  16 team Sub-Confederation Champions League running underneath.

Yes, we will have less chance of qualifying for the final FIFA tournaments, but if we do get there we will have played in a tournament with Australia, Japan, South Korea, China etc and so will be worthy of our spot.  For national teams mens and womans, we will get a 4 year cycle of meaningful games.  For age group, 2 decent tournaments every 2 years.  Our clubs will have a meaningful champions league to aspire to each year.

I think the split of Asia in two is not going to happen. Just let it go. They won't split just to absorve Oceania. What would we provide to them? Nothing. Even the idea of two sub-confederations in a larger confederation is not viable. I can't see them changing how things work just to have 10 Islands countries less competitive than Hong Kong or Maldives. They are fine without us or any of the Islands. 

Maybe we need to stop looking wistfully at AFC and just accept  we aren't leaving OFC any time soon. Instead we should try to push to reform OFC, get some consistency in tournament staging and support football development in the Islands as much as possible - maybe arrange tours for youth teams and so on. It's better that OFC is as competent and competitive as it can be if most of our games are going to be against its members. Sure, that's not ideal but the current situation is worse - a professionally run OFC and greater football development in the likes of Fiji, PNG, and Tahiti is probably the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future.Given the current FIFA corruption crisis we probably won't get a better chance to clean up OFC than this either

Was anyone expecting this? And why now?   

Probably one of the best thing that could happen to the OFC, and it's all because of Fiji's great perfomance in the U20 World Cup

I'm going to take the cynical path. PNG just got the U17WWC and who is the OFC president? Now what else has his confederation been given for no real reason other than 1 shock result in a tournament? 2 spots at 2 tournaments.

To me, this smells of payback for something.

I think its just a way of keeping OFC on the leash regarding our 1/2 world cup spot...

"Hey OFC, we'll give you another nation to play in those Mickey Mouse U17 & 20 comps if you drop any claims for a full WC berth"

Also Europe does not give a rats arse about the two tourneys, it gets more of a hard on from playing with itself at youth level.

I guess the other angle to this is that with two OFC sides there is a slightly better chance we will get drawn slightly easier WC groups.

I would expect it to help a lot with development of the region. It means U17 and U20 men and womens teams get to go to age group world cups and the experience that trickles through is significantly more than is happening now for the Island teams. There is coaching experience, dealing with long tournaments, dealing with travel, dealing with different playing styles, dealing with higher quality teams etc etc etc.  That to me is quite significant in its impact long term.  There is an awful lot of technical information handed out to teams that participate, full view video from all games is shared from FIFA,  in depth technical reviews and analysis of all games of all teams available.  I would think that because of the 2 yearly cycle of both age groups and sexes it would be a massive boost to the Island nations development.

So, towards that;

"

The qualifying tournaments are already as long or longer than 3 group games would be in an age group WC, so I don't think they'll gain experience from longer tournaments. Dealing with travel would be good but I don't know how relevant it would be for long term development because how often do senior teams travel outside the Islands for matches anyway? Occasional ones against us but that's it. In terms of dealing with different playing styles and higher quality teams,that's true, but I don't know how much impact a few games really have. The technical analysis is useful but how much chance is there to absorb it and make change as a result? If different nations are qualifying each cycle then there's no consistency developing on these experiences. On the other hand, if it was the same country every time then that's only going to benefit that country.

An age group World Cup would be a great experience for the teams that make it but I just really don't think that it will significantly impact football development. I know the Island nations have a very different context to us, but has Australia's exit from OFC and our consequential run of age group world cups measurably helped football development here? I personally don't think so.

I don't disagree that FIFA could continue to help develop football in Oceania but I don't think that an extra age group WC spot will do that. At least, not much.

I think it's their way of saying "have fun there as your not going to be in any other half decent comp (Olympics etc) any time soon, right Fiji".

Better to have a few meaningful matches than none at all. The two spots will also make the OFC Championships more competitives in the way that it won't be just having to beat NZ, kids will be able to make at least one mistake in one match. It will make the tournaments more actractive to the Islands. Tahiti and the Solomons usually prefer to spend the money for these championships in other things and now will probably afford the travel because they have something to play for. All that will eventually make a very positive impact.

NZF Statement: High Performance Director Fred de Jong

Monday 28 September, 2015

For immediate release

New Zealand Football confirmed on Monday the resignation of High Performance Director Fred de Jong.

A former All Whites international with 21 caps, de Jong departs the national body after ten years on the New Football board and three years in the High Performance Director role.

New Zealand Football CEO Andy Martin thanked de Jong for what has been a major contribution to the advancement of football in New Zealand.

“Fred has significantly improved the High Performance platform upon which New Zealand Football will continue to build,” Martin said.

“He has been instrumental in implementing many of the recommendations from the 2013 review of the World Cup campaign and has played a major role in the planning and early delivery of our elite game blueprint; the Beyond Football Plan.

De Jong will continue in his role until the end of December. An announcement will be made shortly on his replacement.

Resign or be fired. This is surely not a shock to anyone.

I agree with AlfStamp on this. It simply allows for meaningful development at the level where it still matters, and where some international competition can produce one-off victories to minnow nations. The competition at senior level is far more difficult for OFC players due to the opportunities at club level offered to others. 

It is also possible that the post-Blatter era will actually allow for some more developments for OFC at senior level in future if the junior team competitions show some results for OFC teams.

Took him long enough.  Good riddance.

40 team World Cup in 2026 looks likely http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/dec/03/wo...

Surely that'll mean direct entry for Oceania. Maybe even a spot and a half!

Yeah which would be stupid. Sure it would be great to qualify for pretty much every world cup but we wouldn't be a competitive team. If they were to expand, they would need to absorb Oceania into somewhere like Asia. Otherwise you are asking for a world cup that has two tier levels and some teams getting thrashed.

I think they want to expand it and rigged it so more European/South American teams that otherwise miss out from qualifying can go.

I think a 36 team WC would be alright (9 groups of 4, top teams and 7 best 2nd placed teams qualify for knockouts) but 40 is just getting silly. I don't think that we would necessarily get tonked every time if we had a direct spot though - and even at the moment there's always a few thrashings at the WC anyway. Look at Germany smashing that random South American minnow at last one... I can't remember the country's name but they wore yellow?

:P