All Whites vs South Africa

This isnt a defence of Herbert but a reality fact. It wont matter who we have as coach, until such a time as we start to produce players with the technical ability to play at the sort of pace and intensity of international matches we will continue to lose. The place to start is with the most important coaches in the country. Those who coach the 5-12 year olds. By the time a kid is 10 you already know if they have a chance of being a decent player. We have roughly the same number of players playing the game as Croatia and they are roughly 5th in the world rankings. They coach smarter. We dont. Blaming Herbert is putting the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

are we going to have more of the same for the Nix, again?

I never said anything about Ricki's abilities, or the appropriatness of him doing both jobs.� You merely alleged that Wynton would do better when the overwhelming evidence is that he wouldn't.As for shirt money ?� It's helped the club find Marco Rojas, so worth every cent.

  WAY too many vested interests from other bodies.

No.

FIFA don't want the Oceania votes handed to Bin Hammen and the AFC in the event of a challenge on Blatter's presidency.

AFC don't want the burden of funding the Island nations, particularly when there is no TV market return on it.  Yes they would get another 0.5 of a world cup spot, but they get that from playing us anyway.

OFC members aren't about to vote themselves off the FIFA junket/gravy train.

NZF won't be the reason it won't happen.

FIFA, the AFC and OFC will be the reason it won't happen.  We can't just say 'excuse me FIFA, we'd rather be in Asia' and expect it to change.  WAY too many vested interests from other bodies.

How does the votes work for each confederation? I saw somewhere that 43 countries were in wc qual from afc and 10/11 from ofc. thats 53/54 countries in one federation if afc and ofc join which is similar to caf (53) and uefa (53). And how would the $ be any different? I can't imagine OFC rolling in it and being able to fund nations more than would be in asia and dont all nations get some $ just being part of fifa?

Or you could say that the players we have can't execute the game plan when placed against a speedy attacking side in a tough competetive game.

We just don't get enough exposure to that kind of play, and it will continue to haunt us until a LOT of the things change in NZ football. Herbert or no Herbert.

But personally I find all this angst against Herbert a bit ironic given the laudits he was given by many of the same people for trying to play possession football and playing 2 forwards against some of the best sides in the world.

You see, This is what you get when you try to polish a turd!!! (FACT). 

3.) please drop the financial argument about travel costs without mentioning the foregone revenues from being stuck in a Federation whose countries have no $, no population and are just deadset unmarketable. Virtually nil match revenue and nil commercial sponsorship in the OFC.

3.) please drop the financial argument travel costs without menioning the foregone revenues from being stuck in a Federation whose countries have no $, no population and are just�deadset unmarketable.

You can polish a turd, thanks to mythbusters they proved that.

Well. The problem is that it's easy to point the finger, but less easy to come up with solutions, particularly considering the financial state of our national body. But here a few things off the top of my head:

1. Facilities - exceptionally poor here. We need a significant investment in playing fields, especially for juniors, to enable them to start developing good technique and grasp basic principles of football. Pretty hard to do that when you're an 8-year old knee deep in mud on a cold July morning.

2. Youth coaching - we need to invest in qualified coaches to work with youth players, who can teach the tehnical and tactical aspects of the game to kids. My 8-year old nephew plays for Petone and is quite a good player for his age. But he's coached by a guy who's one of the dads, and whose knowledge of the game and ability to relate it to kids that age is not up to scratch. Good on him for getting in there, but that kind of approach doesn't take us too far.

3. Youth development - this is one of the critical areas for me, as I think this is where we are losing out big time in the international game. Our teenage players (15-18 age group) lack the development of their counterparts in developed footballing nations. While our boys go to school and maybe get 2-3 training sessions a week (with very, very few exceptions), in many other footballing countries the same age-groups are training 5 times a week, and are on verge of professional contracts. We, on the other hand, get a massive drop-out because the professional pathway is too narrow. Of the ones who do remain in the game, their development has been slower than that of their counterpartsin other countries, and they consequently tend to struggle unless exceptionally talented or prepared to make huge sacrifices in order to succeed. But you can't build a system around exceptions to the rule.

4. The lack of a good and strong domestic league is obviously significant, but it's hard to improve the standard considering the ability of players who come into it. So to raise the standard, the investment needs to go into the junior levels of the game first. The reality is that we will never have a domestic league that could rival the A-League, so the emphasis would need to be on producing players regularly who can compete at that level and beyond. This of course means we need to fight hard and lobby extensively to keep the Phoenix in the league, and hopefully get another NZ team in there at some point in the future. If the Nix get kicked out of the A-league, I can see some very dark times ahead for NZ football.

How are we going to do all this without a significant amount of money that it would require and that NZF doesn't have? I don't know. I guess we take baby steps and spend the money strategically with the long-term in mind. But that may be too much to expect from NZF.

3. Youth development - this is one of the critical areas for me, as I think this is where we are losing out big time in the international game. Our teenage players (15-18 age group) lack the development of their counterparts in developed footballing nations. While our boys go to school and maybe get 2-3 training sessions a week (with very, very few exceptions), in many other footballing countries the same age-groups are training 5 times a week, and are on verge of professional contracts. We, on the other hand, get a massive drop-out because the professional pathway is too narrow.