Tanzania, Botswana, Italy friendlies

I forgot Sigmund was still injured. I'll have Christie in there and have Mulligan on the bench and in the second half as third sub after James and Woods. There is bound to be free kicks given in the counterattacking.

I'll have both Killen and Woods on in the second half. I wouldn't trade them for each other. I would sub off old Elliot to allow Smeltz, Brown, James and Bertos on.

The reason I have Killen on, is that we haven't had Killen and Smeltz on as the pair up front in the last two games and we need to give it a go for 45 minutes. Plus we need Killen to get some match fitness, Wood can wait for 45 minutes and he isn't losing much. His 17 year old pace against tried legs in the second half would be a nice wild card against the Italians.

When a player comes off only one is allowed to take his place, not four.

I thought you were following my posts. . .

I suggest that sub on James and Woods in the second half and sub off Oughton and Elliot.

(the difference in your line up to mine is that you have James and Woods starting with Killen and Oughton off, whereas I think it would better if James and Woods cames on the second half, with Killen and Oughton starting. I would want the team to play solid defensive first and adjusting to the pace. I wouldn't want to fire the guns (our speedsters) too early or the whole game will blow out of control and we lose massively)

Re-arrange the field positions to allow Killen, Woods, Bertos, Smeltz Brown freedom in the Midfield and Forward positions. And largely leave the defence alone but have Vicelich to push up into a temporary defensive midfielder position when the 5 do their counter attacking.

What I meant to say, is that I wanted in the second half only, to have along with Killen upfront as first targetman; Smeltz, Brown, James and Bertos on the field at the same time and not one missing to capitalise on the counterattacking.AllWhitebelievr2009-06-08 04:42:05

i would say not getting embarassed is quite important if we want to play any football in the next few years in the (sadly quite likely) event that we lose our world cup playoff? anyone agree?

Italy game on TV??  i'm assuming that it will be on TV in Italy, but i'm not ruling out that to them this is that low profile that it won't be.  haven't been able to understand enough italian to trawl through their tv listing on the internet, but hopefully it will and i'll be able to get a feed from justin tv.  i was half considering looking to see if i could get a cheap flight to anywhere in Italy just to watch it on TV!!  anyone know what time kick off is going to be?

that's a very european TV friendly time...

Haha Id be quite content for the ref blew his whistle for the start of the match and then blew it again straight away for full time

to answer my own question - Bar Italia in Soho sounds promising...

The only chance we have of keeping the scoreline respectable against Italy and Spain is by playing an ultra-conservative game. Men behind ball, shutting down spaces in our defensive third, and try and put together a decent counter-attack or two, and hope for a few set-pieces.

Any talk of let's play two up front, play possession football - we're nowhere good enough to do that against this kind of opposition (and won't be for some time to come). If we do that, they could hit us for double-figures if they really wanted to.

Tactics against Iraq and SA should be more positive, but these two teams are better organised and technically better than us, so even there a bit of caution wouldn't go amiss.el grapadura2009-06-08 09:30:22

practising defensive play couldn't hurt for the first leg of our WC qualifier either.  would be fantastic to be able to take a 0-0 result back to NZ for the second leg, especially for all you lucky devils that get to go to it.

jamesnz2009-06-08 10:27:10

I wouldnt be to concerned about what he score is against Italy. Its only a warm up game, a friendly, so the score dosent matter. Its more important that the players get game time together and they try things out they want to use in the Confed Cup games.

Botswana Gazette's "deep throat" informer reveals ...

damn, that has lots of errors!!!

Could be an auto-translation from Bantu or something.. or english-speaking football journos are thin on the ground ..like the grass ..in Botswana.

BTW, noticed in the Botswana link posted above, (cheers Marius Lacatus)
 this quote from NZ press from Ricki Herbert

"....New Zealand media quoted All Whites coach Ricki Herbert saying "I don't want to play down the Confederations Cup. It's going to be fantastic. (But) the World Cup is massive isn't it? The biggest competition in the world.The World Cup is important for me," Herbert said before..."

There's obviously a clear strategy in place re this build-up through ConFed Cup to WC qualifiers.
Shane Smeltz was saying very much the same thing about 2/3 of the way through his TV3 interview in this Forum
- here





RedGed2009-06-08 13:03:33

The point I was making is that if we try to play football with them, they could absolutely annihilate us if they really wanted to.
3-0 against either of those sides wouldn't be a bad result for us at all.

not sure if it's been mentioned - but what was Herbie on about openly stated that he was resting his decent players due to a rough pitch. Would have made those that did play feel stink when they heard that.

Sorry Smeltzy, this battle ground looks particularly nasty. Gather up the cooks, runners, women, children and anyone dispensable. We'll send them out instead...TheKop2009-06-08 19:46:23

just common sense to rest your best players if the pitch is going to injure them would we rather a win against bostwana in a friendly or a win/draw/close loss at the con feds.

They would have feel even more stink when he told them that they would be defending more and not to over exert themselves to attack because of the pitch.

He also said that he didn't want to offend the Botswana Football Association because of their over zealous efforts to try and please them. Botswana FA don't get much help to get quality facilities and it seems that NZF understood how difficult it was for them.

Franky, they played out of politeness and the Botswana media are placing pressure on the Government to fund their stadiums in time for the World Cup 2010 so they can benefit from the teams base camping.

Sort of the same thing we be doing when Australia gets to host World Cup finals one day.

I received a pitch related injury 17 years ago and it screw up my career chances. The pitch wasn't even bad expect for that one bloody soft part that gripped my leg as I turn. The injury was the same as Michael Owens Injury, it was freaky and pitch related.

Having been on that side of things. Never underestimate what a bad pitch can do. The pitch has to be inspected and prefect everywhere, if it is not then I would have done the same thing as they did. I think that it is a good sign that Ricki and the team management is looking after his players welfare. You need to always have a pitch inspection even if it is FIFA tournament venue event.

Got a pitch related injury a few weeks ago, ankle is still f**ked :p

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/2486234/All-Whites-expect-tough-time-from-Italy
Just another story about our match against Italy..

ask http://www.yellowfever.co.nz/forum/member_profile.asp?PF=56

Italy game to be televised.  Thankyou Sky, would email you to let you know it's appreciated but can't be bothered right now and don't know the address.  Hopefully we won't have to go through this in future.

Its gonna be a good game - 4-4-1-1 apparently. And strongest line up too so that will be interesting in itself to see how it goes. I can actually see us pulling one for some reason, we've had poor recent results and to me it feels like we are going out there with something to prove, whereas Italia are going to turn up to warmup for Confeds. I really think we could get a result and that would certainly create a NZ buzz before each confed game.

Really hoping Smeltz can perform to his best and find himself a deserved European contract.

You're dreaming.

They just thumped Northern Ireland 3-0 on the weekend without getting out of the second gear.

Sad but true. Not getting  too much is all we can hope for.

I seem to remember the performance against Brazil prior to the last world cup was meritorious, something similar would do I guess

Silly boy

Fingers crossed for the boys.

haha the tab has odds for the italy game. put a cheeky $5 on a draw haha

http://www.tab.co.nz/sport/?option=446

anyone know if there is any coverage on tv of the oz vs bahrain game tonight?