Also working in that heat would not be much fun. Of course it is not easy to adjust living in a place that is culturally and religiously poles apart from your normal lifestyle.
but money talks lads
I think we can surmise Hudson would be already earning much more than NZF would pay - plus successfully coaching a team in the AFC and the Asian Cup is a lot more prestigious than the All Whites playing a couple of low key friendlies in the next 14 months before competing to be champion of the Pacific Islands.
You would only walk out on such a coaching gig due to unhappiness with your employers or the local football and political environment.
Hudson would have plenty of reason to be unhappy with his employers and the political situation - the FA would be controlled by the corrupt and oppressive ruling family over there. There continue to be plenty of human rights violations in Bahrain, including against sportsmen.
Here are the search results for "Amnesty International Bahrain": up there with the worst in the Middle East outside of Syria:
https://www.google.co.nz/webhp?sourceid=chrome-ins...
In fact, some 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.
...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.