Anthony Hudson (FAT Technical Director | Thailand)

wait better idea: how about instead of bringing Ricki back, we all go back in time to the time when Ricki was an awesome Kiwi-born manager for club and country, cos then he'd be awesome, and I'd be younger, quicker and probably in some of the best football and drinking shape of my life....

I've wondered about Ramon and how he would go. Coaching a country - dealing with the people you have v a club, and being able to buy players from anywhere who fit your playing style.  We should have him as a technical adviser at least.

I'm torn on this...

Jose Figueira and Paul Temple got sacked after qualifying for the U17's World Cup (Scoring 35, conceding 7 in 7 matches). And they played good football to boot!

Hudson's record in the OFC Cup was played 5, scored 10, conceded 1 with some of the dourest stuff we have seen from a New Zealand team in 10 years. Squeaking past PNG in the final on penalties. 

I didn't think Figueira and Temple deserved the boot and earned the right to take that U17 team further. But maybe Andy Martin (and Hudson) need to apply their same ruthless results and 'alignment' thinking to the senior mens team. It is obvious to me that one team is not aligned.

Martin should call time on Hudson's tenure. But that won't happen. He's balls deep in Hudson now so Martin will see it through to the end. 

Whatever that might be.

Alignment means we all have to play that way now. Sigh.

Long throw ins are the new total football.

I just hate what impressions this team playing this turgid football has left on the kids watching. Every junior coach this week will be saying, "now don't boot it long like you saw the All whites play the last two weeks". Where is the fudgeing #alignment?

Hay scouting for U17s and Bazeley for U20s.. They've stopped visiting football pitches, but you can see them in gyms looking for kids with long arms and big shoulders. #longthrownation #alignment

Makes sense, we are a rugby country after all. Just get a line out organised.

Sack Hudson - Sean Fitzpatrick for head coach.

For how long would you watch the Phoenix if they played that kind of football? All this result and conditions talk is bull and the players and fans now that. Hudson had enough time and 'meticulous planing' to create a game plan and style and this was the result? I thought the display was so sad that you have to hide it from every aspiring football kid in the country. I blame the coach for this, I gave Hudson some credit in the past but that is all used up. I don't think we will see anything exciting football under him.

That's the first time I've seen the All Whites under Hudson. Up till now, I've cut him some slack. I was impressed with his presentation when first appointed, I accepted the draw in Myanmar (knowing that ASEAN teams can be completely different propositions at home compared to the Middle East).

However, last evening was appalling. Again, I can accept the premise behind the tactics, but the execution was awful. Lots of over hit long balls & over-reliance on long-throws in the first half, but more worrying, for me, was the lack of ball-playing ability of NZ's players. So many times a couple of touches and some composure was needed before the through ball, but most of our players seemed to treat the ball as a hot potato. The notable exceptions were Barbarouses & Patterson initially, & after substitutions, I thought Brockie, Rojas & Fenton did well.

I've got some serious doubts about Hudson due to A) the inability to get the game-plan working effectively after (by international standards) a decent build-up period & a full tournament, and B) the inability to select players who can control & pass a ball. 

Big Pete's comment re Hudson's Ballon d'Or vote looks very prophetic.

To their credit PNG, showed you could play fairly decent football on that pitch, & were unlucky not to be going to Russia.

This is always such a stupid question/argument.

How about if we played quality football and won which we are capable of doing.

Overall our players are better than the island nation players and if they are capable of playing pass and move then so are we.

i have no doubt if we had played pass and move we have enough quality to have won all our games by 3 or 4 goals.

The reason we only just scraped through the last 2 games is that the coach has us playing a type of football the majority of our players didnt learn to play as kids and youth and most of them dont play at club level.

I wonder if Hudson thought we played awful?

He's attacking the media and people back home for their negativity:

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/veitch-on-sport...

I fully expect there to be a few players who now become "unavailable". I would think that the likes of Tuiloma, Rojas, Kosta, Wee Mac to all regard that type of anti-football as detrimental to their careers. Bill has taken a lot of crap for his displays in PNG but what do we expect - he was being asked to play in midfield for a team that never used its midfield. His neck must be wrenched from continually seeing the ball pass over his head. Our 'real' players, our true footballers must be aghast at what the team was being asked to do.

It's been said already but Hudson has "coached" his way to his job being untenable.

Hell no, but just winning is not good enough in the islands, not for NZ.

Also, we (mostly) aren't complaining about the tactics used. Long ball ain't pretty, but it's been shown countless times to work.

The problem is, how terrible we played it, and, chiefly, how we were bossed by NCL, how we were bossed by PNG, and, even in scoring 5, how we were bossed by Vanuatu, in the second half at least. It wasn't great from an NZ point of view to see how Krishna tore our backline to shreds in the opener (although that was fantastic from a Nix point of view. He's back! *squeals with joy*).

Jesus guys, slow down! Like, 18 people posted while I was writing that!

We looked at our most dangerous when retaining possession and passing the ball, and our most vulnerable when coughing up b possession by firing a long ball.

He does have a point that the players are giving their all and deserve support. But he skates over the fact that most of the criticism I've seen have been about Hudson's selections, and Hudson's tactics.

No Mark Hammett is the man! We need someone who can really screw us over better then those at present.

that should be the last straw. 

Give anyone with a bit of muck around football knowledge a squad of experienced profesional players and they should be able to beat the island teams, even if it is by shutting up and keeping out of the way, mostly. 

Does he think we should be lauding the way his teams swept through the competition or the brilliant goals that we scored? Almost none of our players played to their potential. At times his selections were incomprehensible. NZ should be aiming for a proven coach as PNG have had, rather than a chap who won a few matches with Bahrain under 20s, but can talk a good game. 

We can understand that not getting to the Olympics put a dent in his preparation, but the games in Port Moresby were a bit tactically incoherent.

Hudson on Radio Sport now.

Wood details not released because Hudson didn't believe Wood that he would leave up until after the semi final no matter how many times Wood told him.

Look, I'm no fan of lynch mobs or #SackTheCoach campaigns. But Hudson is doing everything wrong PR-wise. He would get a hell of a lot more credit if he came out and said why he decided to play long-ball, why he picked Dyer or Prelevic, and then said "I'm the coach and the buck stops with me". But by refusing to even engage with criticism, he just makes himself look like he has something to hide.

I wonder what his mentor Jose would think of his coaching ability after watching that tournament 

But he's (apparently) had lots of emails from prominent people in football in New Zealand congratulating him not just on the win, but also on HOW we have played.

I find that very hard to believe.

I, like lots, cut Hudson a lot of slack earlier in his tenure as I believed what he said and above all trusted him to come through with the goods when it mattered. He'll argue that he's done just that but he hasn't. What he's done is taken us backwards and devalued the jersey by handing out caps to players who aren't anywhere near good enough. He's got us playing a prehistoric brand of football that all other international coaches abandoned in the early nineties.

As Doloras says above, he's just going on the defensive and clearly doesn't feel he has to be accountable for the truly bizarre team selections and tactics. And, sadly, NZF will probably back him. 

I've been an AW's supporter since the Newmarket Park days and I have to say that I truly hate what our national team has become under Anthony Fudgeing Hudson. Fudge off back to Bahrain and take your anti-football with you, you clueless twunt.

Not usual for a manager after winning on penalties to come out saying "We won the match fair and square", more usual to say penalties not ideal way to finish a match etc.

"I'm not going to sit here and justify anything. My job is to win" 

Talks about 'difficult circumstances' which mainly amounts to Papua New Guinea wanted to win the final. "Everyone want to beat New Zealand." "The whole country going to the stadium and they want to beat us". (I note that PNG has nearly twice the population of NZ)

Sounds like he was holding massive delusions about the Wood situation. Makes me wonder whether he prepared for Wood not being there in the final as well as could have.

or is too defensive about his position to admit making a mistake.

He could say something like "I know Dyer looked liked a punt, but I thought, like Marinovic, he had the temperament for the big game and the way he took his penalty in the shootout really showed that"

It would be very easy for us to be sympathetic with him I reckon. But he doesn't make it easy. 

If his reasons for selecting the young guys like Prelevic and Dyer were "I couldn't trust the older guys to respect me and look up to me as they had a lot more professional experience than me" then that's a worry.

Okay I listened to the interview. He basically said he played a style to win because he was missing seven players that are the core of the team, examples? Deklan Wynn. 

Now Wynn is no doubt talented but he's not the core of the team by a long stretch. 

So he played a style of football that gave him the best chance to win... But in the future we're going to play the "Antony Hudson" brand of football. If this style, and not the Antony Hudson style, is the best style to win then why change? 

He also said he asked Wood multiple times to stay, he also asked other players to put pressure on him to stay. That to me sounds a bit awkward for the squad dynamic. 

Anyway, we're going to see a change in plan apparently in the build up to the confederations cup.

Is it just me or does NZF only give interviews to non footballing people? I never really see interviews with Andrew Gourdie, and Piney has said a few times that he gets declined when asking for access. It's probably safer to talk to people like Tony Veitch who doesn't care about the sport and can only ask superficially tough questions, and when he gets a superficial answer can't dig any further.

Just look at the access that the Phoenix give the fans compared to the AW's - I'd love for Antony Hudson or similar to be on the Phoenix City / The kids are all white podcast. I'd actually love for WelNix to run NZ Football.

In the interview Hudson said that in previous games we've played players straight from the ASB Premiership against players that have come straight from the Champions League and that is what he has to work with. To which I'd love someone to ask why aren't we picking our other Professional players Like Keats and James who play in positions that we lack in week in week out in Europe? 

He won't be sacked, for the reasons you list.

But could he at least be open about why he's played like that. It's ridiculous to try and deny that we were poor, that we played poor football and that it's not what we like to see. He has instead come out and said that we deserved it, which, on the face of it, we didn't.

I think people are calling for his head because of the PR blunders in the aftermath of the final, which indicates he thinks there is no problem, not with the tactics we played, but with the way we played it (ICYMI, we were horrible).

If this is true, mega wow. Piney and Gourdie have done much more for the sport in NZ than either Hudson or Martin will ever do barring some miraculous transformation in their styles and methods. If both Piney and Gourdie expressed confidence in CEO and coach that'd be good enough for me.

That is hilarious.Our negativity,what about his own negativity.

I stand corrected here, but I am sure I have heard somewhere that Hudson and Veitch are actually mates

At least Hudson does front the media, unusual from NZ Football.

Fudge I hope that's not true

It would be horrible and libelous of me to speculate on whether they share certain interests. Veitch should not have any mates.

Imagine if the West Ham fans had been served up that.