The answer to the problem is probably illustrated by this little thread. the truth is football fans and the football community here in NZ hasnt got a clue. its more interested in excuses why we cant be better or in diverting attention away from the issue towards things that arent relevant.
That's a pretty passive aggressive statement given that you started the thread and haven't suggested anything yourself.
Look, the issues are many and massive. For a start, we're not comparable to Iceland in several ways. Better comparisons would be with Australia, the USA, and Canada, because they all share the fact that football is not the main sport, and their confederations are not as strong as UEFA or CONMEBOL. Yeah Iceland has a smaller population than us and they're better than us but our population is 0.3% of India's and we're ranked above them.
But anyway, if you want to ask what can be done to make our players/national team better, then there's a few barriers:
- Geography. We struggle to get teams to play us at home during international windows, partly because we are so far away from where most international footballers from decent footballing nations play (Europe). We have to play against Oceania opposition in Oceania conditions for any qualifying for international tournaments, and that limits us. We often lose several top players from those games because of the travel and potential impact on their club careers. Because of these factors we don't get a chance to either field a full strength side very often, or to play quality opposition.
- Culture. Football might be played by a lot of people here but it's not a part of the culture. Not many kids in NZ grow up wanting to be pro footballers and not many regularly watch top level football, so we struggle to get that general sense of understanding of the game which is instinctual in other parts of the world. Kiwi kids grow up watching rugby and playing rugby at school at lunch time, and they absorb those skills and tactical understanding. I think this is slowly changing as the NZ population gets more cosmopolitan, but it's a long slow process. Rugby is still so dominant in kiwi culture that the All Blacks World Cup team announcement was done at the Beehive.
- Mismanagement. Shambles like the Wynne eligibility situation or the failure to appeal Moss's suspension before the 2010 WC show that NZF is adept at shooting itself in the foot. This should be easier to change but somehow it isn't...
Look I'm all for thinking about ways to develop NZ football and I think we could do better, but as I've said before on this site, relative to similar countries we actually do about as well as you might expect. Canada, for instance has a bigger population (about 8 or 9 times ours), is a rich Western country like us, and does not have football as its national sport. They've got 5 pro teams, we've got 1. They've only been to one WC, we've been to 2. They're only about 30 places above us in the FIFA rankings currently too (as BS as those rankings are).