Like the sound of this Hudson guy. Young and hungry.....just what we need. Light on coaching experiance but has done some good work in Bahrain.
Just wondering though......In June 2013 he signed a two year extension as Bahrain national coach....so he's locked in until June 2015. He coached Bahrain to qualify for the 2015 Asian Cup in Australia.
Why would you give up the chance to coach Bahrain at a major international competition? Bahrain play WC qualifiers in Asia, NZ play in Oceania. Bigger games against better opposition in Asia.
Why would you give up a big middle eastern salary to coach the Aw's for $125,000???? per year.
Why would the Bahrain FA tear up a contract for the guy who has got them the best results in ages?(he was offered another 2 year extension in Feb 2014 so Bahrain want to keep him)
If this guy is ready to walk out on his Bahrain contact after 18 months is he just as likely to walk out on his AW contract early?. Especially when he sees what a dog the whole NZF/Oceania setup is.
Still....if we get him and he stays, he appears to be a much better option than some of the other names we have heard.
Perhaps he (or his family) don't like being in the vicinity of an increasingly imploding Syria/Iraq war front that looks likely to descend into a region-wide sectarian war soon. I bet there are a lot of nervous ex-pats in the Gulf and Saudi who are looking for safer bolt holes right now, irrespective of the money.
Plus Bahrain itself hasn't been the most stable country in recent years, lots of government over reacting to very peaceful protests, including people being shot by the government at a funeral a few years ago.
Good point that.
In fact, several of the Bahrain players the All Whites faced in 2009 were jailed and tortured by the regime in the following few years after they were seen as implicated in protests against the regime. One of the national team had to leave the country and ended up in the A-League.
Arrests have continued since then until now - Anthony Hudson may now have finally realised what is going on and how he is being used by a corrupt regime (the Sunni ruling family maintain an oppressive rule over the Shi'ite majority).
Several footballers and other athletes remain in jail and more were jailed in more recent months.
Some players NZ played in 2009 remain banned from ever playing for Bahrain - surely FIFA should expel Bahrain for government interference in its football? FIFA has done this before.
Three national youth team players have been arrested and one jailed for five years (Hudson was previously Bahrain u-23 coach).
He must know about all this.
Report in the Turkish (free uncensored) media from January this year:
" [Bahrain] Football officials and critics of the government say football and other sports suffer from a lack of planning as a result of politicization. “There are no sports since the uprising. Matches serve as PR to show Bahrain is back to normal,” Mr. Hayyat said. “We have lost qualified managers. As a result, football suffers,” added a football official...."
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/bahrain-detains-f...
BAHRAIN DETAINS FOOTBALL TEAM AND SCORES OF PLAYERS AND ATHLETES
January 6 2014
[Edited by me - highlights of longer article]
...In one of the latest rounds of detentions, authorities lifted three football and two handball players of al-Ittifaq Maqaba, a sports club in Diraz, a hot spot of continued protest against the government, the sources said. They said the athletes – football players Bahr Mohammed Jawad, Hassan Abdullah Marhoum, Qassem Habib Abdullah and handball players Ahmed Abdel Jalil and Ibrahim Juma’a – had been arrested in a Dec. 5, 3 am raid on Diraz, one of the frequent sweeps of the area. They said the athletes were among an estimated ten people taken away by security forces. The athletes were suspected of participating in an illegal gathering, the activists and journalists said.
A sixth athlete, Ahmed Fallah, a goalkeeper for al-Budaiya FC in the coastal town of Budaiya, which like its neighbor Diraz, remains a hot bed of anti-government sentiment, was last month detained around the same time as the others, but has since been released.
The five detained athletes join an estimated 50 sports people being held in prison since the 2011 uprising. Their detentions are in addition to 150 athletes and sports officials, including three national football team players, who were arrested or fired from their jobs during the crackdown on the revolt. Most of those were quickly released and reinstated. Two of three national team players, who were at the time publicly denounced on television as spies, traitors and asserted that they had been tortured in prison, play for local clubs but were not allowed to rejoin the national squad.
Among those detained since is the whole squad of the al-Ekar Youth Center in the village of al-Ekar. The 17-member team was detained in October 2012 in a security operation following a bombing in which a police officer was killed. Opposition groups said the arrests had been arbitrary.
Other detained athletes include al-Ahli and national football youth team players Ahmed Hassan Abdul Wahab, Younis Hader and Jaffar al-Asfoor, national youth handball team player Ali Almolani, beach volleyball midfielder Ridha Abdul Hussain, and Bahrain gymnastics champion Hussein Abdul Ghani.