Fair enough. I was actually thinking the other day about how we really seem to struggle to produce players who read the game well and play smart football. We've started to produce more technically proficient players than perhaps we used to but we don't seem to produce midfielders with vision and intelligence or defenders who just seem to be in the right place at the right time. Reid and Smith didn't come through our youth system so don't count. Where are the heirs to Nelsen, Elliott, and Vicelich in the next generation? Tuiloma maybe in a few years, who else?
Is there a blind spot in our development methods regarding tactical and game awareness? Have we focused on skills but forgotten smarts?
I don't know enough about the pathways and youth coaching in NZ to say, but what do people who know more than me think?