AW v Mexico Match Thread 5pm SS1 Thurs4th

He hasn't played for 12 months and last time he turned up for a camp he was overweight and unfit.  He turned down the U20's and possibly the Olympic squad when he had a chance to make a profile.

He needs to get his life on track or he's gone.  He should come and have a crack at the Phoenix as he can't seem to find a deal anywhere else and at least the Phoenix know what he could be.  Youth internationals for England at the age of 15 are ten a penny in amateur football, it's those that go on from there that make a career and all James had done is keep rolling backwards.,

He isn't even close to a potential international currently, and needs to start again as far as I can see.  When you're rejected by MK Dons it's time to re-evaluate.

If he came here would he get gametime do you reckon or turn into Mulligan II?

Did NZ get a shot away all match?  I don't remember any.

And there's no way Vela's shove on Siggy was a foul.  Siggy, McKain, Dura, and Muscat do that 24/7 and we never complain so come one.

Moss was pretty solid.  Smith had a good debut.  Thought McGlinchey could have tried slightly harder to whip that ball in when he got past the goalie but oh well.

Coombes was great running forward but his crossing was woeful.

With Vicelich and Nelsen we would have had a chance of a 0-0 draw.  Couldn't see us scoring, though.

So I can see us being solid vs Australia but don't know how much we'll threaten their goal.
loyalgunner2010-03-04 20:46:11

wasnt too impressed with boys tonight.. Thought that Tim Brown puts a lot of pressure on the other midfielders and really needs to carry a bit more of the load, Leo had a very quiet first half. slightly better at times in the second half but im guessing that 2-0 is probably a moral victory but certainly isnt going to frighten any of the other teams at the world cup

We did score... I wasn't convinced on the offside but football365 thought it was on. Tough game really but what did we expect. 2-0 is a decent result against a full strength 15th best team in the world what were we expecting?!

Plenty to work on but at least we were relatively competitive.

Damn right we were. My Spanish is iffy, but the Telemundo commentators kept saying "muy largo" - "too slow".

Replay showed it was definitely offside.  But he buried it so well didn't he?

Chins up. It was positive. Coulda, shoulda, woulda... it wasn't. We were a class below, as well we are. But we were VERY far from disgraced with a few (key) players out in a VERY hostile environment.

If offered 2-0 before k/o most of us would have bitten the hand. Good effort by the boys, and the coaching staff.


Keep it real

Good point, if we had 35 000 kiwi's supporting us (as opposed to 80 000 Mexicans against us), our first team squad and less jetlag then we could've been far more competitive.  Not using them as excuses but makes you wonder if we could have drawn or even won if we'd hosted it.

With a 19yo debutant at Centre Back, and another first timer...

for what theyre worth (which is usually zero) here are Goal.com's player ratings. http://goal.com/en-us/news/114/mexico/2010/03/04/1817160/player-ratings-mexico-2-0-new-zealand

Good review on home page so I will leave it to the experts...all I can add is I dont think it added or proved anythging so glad its over..lets get Nix players back here and pumped and leave the actual WC training and hard work for post Australia which wil be just anothertraining run and hit out in reality.  Boro4eva2010-03-04 21:07:17

Alright game. 1st 20 was awesome by the 'Whites. After tht we were under the pump a bit which was expected,
Mexico unlucky not to be up at HT and deserved to win by more. AW's need more attacking - easier to say then do however.

Good to watch the game next to the Fever boys too

yeah , pretty fair result . (6.5/10)
Remember virtual home game for Mexico.90 000  hombres  etc.. Valuable experience for our boys, bringing back Captain Nelsen and Vicelich will shore up our defenses, moregame time for Chris Wood as well!! By June 11 we will be 'battle hardened". A neutral venue and altitude will even everything out!!

Considering our nonexistant buildup and missing two of our best 2 most experianced defenders in Nelsen and Vicilich then a 0-2 against number 15 ranked mexico away is a fair result....well done lads!!!

Yeah.  Thinking of banning Goal.com ratings.

And it was a "FRIENDLY" three days prior to most of the squad playing again (many in a rather important game/league) with a day of travel thrown in (at no extra cost). And it's three months away from the big show...

Not arguing with the perfectly valid points many have made but don't think this is all we have to move forward with... I'd be confident that it isn't.... just as it isn't for other teams as well. Good result, but (whilst an important part of our WC prep), really means little.

Sunday is coming...

Quite happy with 2-0. I struggle to say that I am happy with a loss, but to Mexico I was worried about a 5-0 humping. Was unimpressed with Coombes, but Smith definitely deserves his place. Bertos looked good on attack, and tbh, thought Smeltz was quite good- although as soon as he got the ball he seemed to have about three men on his back. Rory- surprised me actually. Haven't thought that much of him recently, but he showed enough to push for a starting spot. Still a bit annoyed at not seeing a lot of Wood, but I guess his time will come.

Of course, a mate and myself promised to skull our pints if we scored.
When Fallon buried it, we kept our promise
On balance we did well.
The first goal was pure speed and a quality touch. The second was soft marking.
On a good day, with improvement we would have walked away with 1-1.
We can only get better.

TBH I was expecting to get done by 4-5, so I will take 2 and move on very nicely.

So much of these games are about perception, people understand 2-0 as being a good result given the circumstances, if we had got done it would have bought all the wolves out.

In terms of on the pitch I only saw about 50 minutes of the game but thought Smeltzy was impressive, has a good touch to beat a defender, sadly though to often that was with his back to goal. It was a shame we didn't see the move break down when we got behind their defence at about the 20 minute mark (cut away to an injured Mexcian)

Certainly with Nelly and Vicelich back as well as a decent buildup I think much better is to come.

that opportunity we never saw a replay of was golden. coombes just needed to put a half decent ball across to smeltz who was unmarked at back post. he fluffed it

Surprised Blanco isn't in the ground yet.  He's that old.

Yeah, if Coombes had pulled that pass off!  I still thought, bar his crosses, he did well.

I can't really make any comment as I have not seen the game, however the result is far better that I expected, so I am happy.

There's a few few knockers out there ready to pounce on the All Whites (witness the vitriol in some of the newspaper reader comments when the merits of the All Whites' Halberg nomination was under discussion), so a 2-0 loss to a top twenty country in front of 90,000 will do.

However, not the best performance, and a lot of work to do and questions to be answered. That's why we have warm up ups.

And no injured Phoenix! Sleep well on the plane lads.

i thought we went ok

our defence definitely looks like it has improved since confed cup. we used to always only just hold off attacks, and then let the floodgates open in the 2nd half, but i thought we looked a lot more solid tonight.
passable result, i thought, considering buildup time. but we really need to work on our attacking. quite often we seem to play everywhere, except for the attcking 3rd of the pitch and maybe have 1 or 2 shots on goal all game. this needs to be worked on... due to the fact that scoring goals helps to win games.

I missed Ariaga, ? Ariaga II, Bariaga, Aruglia and Bizotzaa. Wished they played in the game against NZ.

I thought the build up, possession composure and movement leading up to the disallowed goal were pretty good. If we could do that for longer periods we could do so much better. i sometimes wish we would believe in ourselves a bit more on the ball. We might just find we arent as bad as we think we are.

These are the same guys who predicted Mexico 4 NZ 1.

However, they have a good point about their old vs young players. With the old players in the first half and the young players in the second half. There was large difference. Of course we were slower than them but their older players were not so convincing as they should be. With their better international players against us and their Mexico-based players in the Bolivia game we did quite well.

i have to disagree with all of you. this mindset really f**ks me off, why are you all happy we lost 2-0 when...

1) Mexico's finishing was worse than Bahrains

2) they scored from a couple of cock ups

3) we had chances and fluffed them

We handed them the goals through 'average at best' defending. i just dont think they played like a 14th ranked nation tonight. and we couldve done A LOT better = me not satisfied.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, someone who sees it for what it is.

Give this man a medal immediately.

Short video highlights . . .

http://videos.aztecadeportes.com/

We just lacking some pace and speed in transition. Need to pick up their light footwork.

I forecast a lot of building up endurance and sprinting sessions in-between times for players with individual planned sessions outside their clubs times with hired local trainers paid by NZF in the six months period. We need to quicker and lighter on the feet. It is quite possible to really surprise the opponents by WC time by increasing the speed of the players.AllWhitebelievr2010-03-05 00:31:05

So that's New Zealand 4-2 on aggregate then! 

With a gap of 29 years . . .