Qualifier v Fiji??

No World Cup qualifier should ever be used as a development match.

re Aaron Scott.

I know there's a lot of frustration and angst over this result, but I think we're starting to go over the top now.

Yes, this was a WC qualifier, but for all intents and purposes (other than FIFA rankings, where the pride will take a big hit), a meaningless one. Put any European/South American/African etc. coach in the same position, they'd play a second-string side.

Someone said that you can't blood young and inexperienced players in World Cup football. Well, if you don't blood them in a game like this, when do you? It's not like we play a lot of international football anyway, and certainly not a lot of friendlies where you can look at players in an international context without the result imperative. We need to expose younger and less experienced players to international competition, and this game was as good an opprtunity as we get.

The result was poor admittedly, but in hindsight might be a good thing too. Our expectations (and our FIFA ranking) were getting way too high, and this may help keep them somewhere in the realm of reality.

scribbler2008-11-20 10:15:44

by work permit difficulties he means if a player of ours wants to go play in England or any other country that requires a work permit (think its just British countries) , he has to have played in 75% of national games in the past 2 years and be in one of the top 75 national teams in the world. I think thats the right figures anyway.

In a nutshell, we lost a WC game to a team that was ranked way below us. That hurts big in the FIFA rankings.

As for work permits, to get those in places like England your country needs to be rated in the top 75 in the world I believe, otherwise it gets pretty difficult...

He's apparently going to North Queensland

we struggle in the islands with a full strength team and 11 players on the park - so im not too surprised

That's a bollocks rule everyone knows the FIFA rankings are absolute crap anyway. What knob came up with this sort of rule?

Saw this result coming from a mile away. Shocking selections from Ricki.

- Picked Draper and Costa who cannot get a game for there club and werent deemed good enough for the Olympic team
- Picked Spoonley who is a sub in the NZFC
- Picked Pritchett who has been injured/very poor in the NZFC of late
- Picked Jeff Campbell who cant make Waitakeres team
- Picked Allan Pearce who is a good NZFC player but isnt good enough to step up to International Level as we saw in the New Calidonia game
- Mulligan and Christie are 2 of the most over rated players in NZ Football
- Apart from Brockie and Peverley picked players who didnt make the Olympic team or players like Aaron Scott who I actually thought had an average Olympics compared to others.

Smeltz is scroing goals when your a goal scorer its all about confidence to keep that run going! Take him who would have scored a couple and been confident and fine for the next Nix game.
Tim Brown has barely played a game in last 12 months surely the more games the better!
Lockhead is a good player but has lacked confidence this season and hasnt been the same player as he was last season so why not take him to also boost his confidence with a good performace!

Just my two sense as to why we got done 2-0. Also I cannot see why we have Ricki as both the Phoenix coach and the National coach.

Brown was suspended.

There is a difference between a 2nd string team and a 10th string scraping the bottom of the barrel on. We play barely any games so when we do we should put out the best team avaliable. valeo2008-11-20 12:28:39

Whats happened to the likes of Campbell Banks and Andy Barron?

Andy Barron is playing for TW, quite well apparently

He's done his shoulder, out for a month.

Banksie is in the VPL.  Maybe at Green Gulley ?

It doesn't matter until the national team has consistently stayed in the top 70 for two years. Seriously, after tough ranked match ups and after the Confederation Cup games are people thinking we are going to stay in the top 70??

We have a long road ahead. The only match that is worth anything is winning that play-off. We have to lose a few really tough games along the way to win that match or we would never likely to win if our mind is in the clouds.

This is a timely reminder of the lack of depth we have and how we need to work on the depth as well as strengthen our top 11 players. We can't expect to play the same 11 players due to normal circumstances and any weakness to the team by substitution will expose us big time by the 5th AFC team, so we need to strengthen our weak players enough so that we can't be exploited in the two leg play-offs.

We don't have as much mantainance on our top 11 players as the rest, just a couple of combination play that can be sorted in a couple of games during the confederation cup before the play-offs. In the meanwhile, with half the All Whites being in the Phoenix set up, which saves some time in making combination plays and having to secure strong friendly games against high ranked teams, we should be able to blood a few good players under less than a year at a high enough level.

Don't get to upset of this match result. It would be enough to work on their game.

Also, having a man down for half a match on debut is very psychological rather than numercial. If they learn about being a man or two short in a match, then they would be able to do some re-arrangements doing something different next time. Normally you can still play competitively by dropping one striker and leaving the target front man still because most of the match work is in the midfield. But if the opponents were able to push one of the defenders into the midfield, then it comes a tight possession game. however, dropping two front man is the other option into the possession game and that may open gaps in the opponent's defence as the attack can come from any of the midfield with their short passing possession game. Anyway, the details of that is a bit long so I wouldn't bother discussing it. But basically, if the numbers are against you, you have to focus on the tactic that is working well already and make it even better as well as securing long spells of possession.

I didn't see the game, but I heard that Fiji justed kicked and run and we were doing the short game but could not shot accurately.

Tbh. How much has the strikers being practicing on their crossbar to distance drills? It sounds like noone has bothered to put in enough work. They are usually a couple of hours a day until you master it so it then it ends up to be like 10 minutes of 95% accurate per day. Seriously, how many shots were on target or on post? They should be aiming towards 80% (like a Dan Carter conversion %) at this level. Btw why don't they produce that statistic during a soccer game?

AWB fix your quote tags.

I think when you get footy people on this forum trying to justify a loss to Fiji, then you know we have reached rock bottom. Aloss to Fiji in a full international is not to be tolerated. The National body is a joke, it should have stepped in and demanded a stronger team take the field. We have lost all credability as a football nation.

I do feel frustrated that we lost to Fiji. However, how often does a national team get the chance to try out new players without risking anything? We've already qualified. I think it was a good idea to let the youngsters play and see how they go.

No need to complain. We know that Ricky is both the Nix and the AW's coach and in his choices he often has to penalize one of the 2 teams. It's a down side to the whole matter, but in my view it's very good for both teams.

I remember last year he took away 6-7 Phoenix players for an AW's away game and the next sunday we played like sh*t and lost. In that case he deemed the AW's WC qualifier more important than an A-League match.

We need to back him up - he knows what he's doing.

Just watched 3 Sports news. 3 football stories. NZ U20 women at their age group world cup, england v germany friendly and another random friendly between scotland and argentina. But NO MENTION of a world cup qualifier played by the NZ senior men's team last night! There is no other country in the world in which that scenario could be even remotely possible and that is also the reason why Oceania is an absolute disaster for the sport in this country.

Asia now....are NZ Soccer even considering it?

I realise this was a match with no importance placed on the result except for a positional change on the world rankings table but surely the player selection must be questioned.

Seatts said there is no way they could afford it.

This is simply a poor poor result, there are better players in the NZFC at all 8 clubs and the AW assistants and maybe also junior level coaches should have been keeping tabs too.  Ricky seems to be wholely involved in the Phoenix.  I believe, as people such as Hickey and Bunce highlighted the dual role is too much for him.

...or money.

Remember how the national body was hugely in debt this year ?  They have no money to spend to make money.
Hard News2008-11-21 09:10:37

Money and politics.

Leo said on the radio this morning it was like playing against twelve men. Elbows and punches flying.
He also thought the sending off was harsh.

Oceania refs.  'nuff said.

Yeah. Fred is hopeless.

Great player, sh*t ref.

really we shouldn't have lost even with that under strength side. im pretty sure our reserve team played there last year and won 1-0 and then lost 2-1. We had a number of proffesionals, even if they are fringe players and i put the loss down to under preparation and bad luck.

...and incompetent officiating.

yeah,that to