Anthony Hudson (FAT Technical Director | Thailand)

This guy as an idiot he behaves like a spoilt kid, I am sick of New Zealand football. The public are sick of it, we deserve better

who actually appointed this guy and on what basis ???? Would love to see him at a proper press conference getting asked some real questions 

Didn't we chase him and he was recommended be Ryan Nelson?

He has a proper English accent, like Martin?  Isn't that enough?

They're both conceited and immune to criticism?

Keeps going on that 'my job is to win'. That argument may hold if they got a boring 1-0 victory, but no, it was 0-0 after 120 minutes and it went down to the lottery of a penalty shootout. While we did win the penalty shootout, if he had done his job better, (and according to him he only had one job) we would have won in 90 minutes, even if ugly. If we had lost the shootout I'm sure he would have pointed out that penalties can be a lottery... but because we won on penalties we are supposed to believe that he did a great job in getting us the win.

He's clearly delusional, play like that at the confeds cup and we will get done by double figures or close to in every fixture. Forget the personnel we will or won't have. If we are conceding 65% position to the pacific nations, I would not be surprised to see sides have 75%+ possession against us in the confeds cup.

What kid growing up aspiring to play sport for their country would want to play a game where you told them that for 3 quarters of the match they won't have the ball, will be chasing shadows. Not many, the national team sets the standard for how the junior national teams play and this filters down to aspiring kids.

Unfortunately all this talk on a forum will do nothing, we are condemned to disappointment, further backwardness and pure incompetence for the next couple of years.

Thought he came across as arrogant wanker on Radio Sport by saying he didn't need to justify his decisions etc. The best way to reduce this so called negativity is by outlining your decisions and reasoning. 

On a more general note, he doesn't interview very well. Rambles on about all sorts with little coherency.  Today he was asked about the style of play in PNG then proceeded to talk about how good they were against South Korea.

A a lot of smoke and mirrors in his act

Even his excuses are bullcrap:

For me, that is the key point.  You can play a game that revolves direct football without turning over that much possession if it is done well

Do ghastly things and not understand why everyone's angry at them?

Did he turn down Russia? I thought it was a cost issue with NZF?

That's on the nose. Anthony Hudson has achieved a good end result in a rather poor, underwhelming manner, but assumingly still trying to do a good thing.

FYI, I did not listen to Hudson on the radio. Feel free to lambast me for any obvious errors/NZF-tinted sunnies.

I think there is no way he is sacked after this. If we lose, then he goes, but we won, so he'll live to fight/hoof it up another day.

Furthermore, I think, if hoofball stops now that we're done with the gruelling ONC conditions (sharke pitch, very hot, little rest time between games) then I'll have no problems with him. Even if we are thrashed thrice over in the Confeds, I just want to see the AWs play decent football, and do it properly. Also, not selecting Moses Dyer would be a start.

The real problem, as has been highlighted many times on other sub-fora, is Martin.

Martin mentioned something about 'too short notice' I think.

I whole heartedly agree Martin needs to go more than Hudson, you might find that Hudson is much better with a better administration behind him. As he said they needed the win not just for the games but also that money funds the next couple of years. NZF live hand to mouth and have very little in the way of contingency funding. NZF also couldn't arrange games for Hudson. It will be interesting to see what he does in the build up to he world cup qualifying.

think I read somewhere that Russia was declined over 50-100k or something? 

Per the PNG game thread I was disgusted and disillusioned by the tactics we employed and Hudson could have been a bit more diplomatic is his response and maybe just explain rather than defend. The football public here genuinely want to embrace the vision he sold us and the style of play. I think most agree it would be a good brand of football support and, more importantly, can win on a higher level than the OFC. I think we genuinely feel let down as because we have been so starved of any games we all ensued to see 5 games of AWs dominating by playing this high press/ physical/possession style.

Anyway, he's not going anywhere just now and neither is Martin. I'm not sure what we'll achieve by hanging him in public. I just hope he has some one he trusts that can explain to him why people feel the way we do. It's only because we actually give a shark. 

Have friends in high places??

Without wanting to pick a bunfight, I disagree.  What you are saying is that we should be happy that Hudson managed to get the AWs to beat PNG on penalties so that now we can get complately humiliated at the ConFeds Cup in Russia.  

I can only draw one logical conclusion from this - that the "good end result" is that we got some competitive games under our belt and that we got a guaranteed 2.5 million payout for NZF, so we should all be happy.

If that's the 'bonus' then NZF should just let go of Hudson and Martin, and go into residential real estate in Auckland full time.  Soon enough from the saved money they would turn over a few juicy properties and produce just as much profit, without the sense of dread and humiliation we all - truly discerning, patriotic NZ football fans - had to endure, despite the ONC win. We played better against Bahrain in 2010.

I am sure that by now I am ranting a bit, but I can see many of us on this forum are feeling like sharke today.

pretty telling of hudson that his only real wins have been against weak island opponents, and only just. I wonder what his record would look like if not for the semi pro island teams, could barely foot it with terrible asain opponents that also have inferior players. The island nations may be shark but they play with flair and heart, something New Zealand lacks alot of, I would rather see island players getting smashed in a confed cup playing their style of football than Hudsons NZ youth team hoofball primary school looking shark. He treats our national mens team like a youth development squad, its a joke. Not seen many/any national teams bring in players that can barely cut it for a local non pro club side or whose build ups are against pub sides (barely winning those).   

I'm giving Hudson the benefit of doubt, our players a clearly just not up to standard so he had to improvise. On top of that we get to go to Russia 2017 which we can iron out some creases and strengthen the playing style and bond the team firmly . He is the man to take us all the way to the World Cup.

Bring on Uruguay!!!!

I saw it all twice with the Socceroos having to go past Uruguay: first with the Frank Farina coached team and the second time around with Guus Hiddink in charge.  

Both times Australia played well, but it was the superior organisation ot the playoffs logistics by Football Australia, and also some sheer good luck (where the games were played first in each case), that got Australia over the line in 2006. They truly learned after that and got their act (largely) sorted by going through Asia.

Believe me, you do not want our WC campaign to be organised by people who do not know how to use a fax machine or that Auckland regional holidays do not apply in Switzerland.

Fallon is quoted:

He dismissed any criticism of the All Whites style of play by saying: “I don’t care for the purists I just care about winning that is the only thing that matters"

Way to set us all back to where we have been trying to escape from for twenty years...

That said, I hope we actually try to do it right at the tournament. 

My only hope is that he saw the conditions/pitch in PNG when he was there for the Olympics, realised he was missing some important players, saw half the players he brought in weren't as fit as he wanted, and went 'stuff it, I don't wanna risk getting caught out at the back. Let's lump it'.

When he says he doesn't need to justify himself, well, actually you kinda do when your turn your back against the philosophy you spouted, and then got 2 coaches sacked because he thought they didn't implement that same philosophy. I'd kinda be happy if he said "conditions were tough, we were nervous about being counteracted against with so little experience at the back, so we tried to play the ball higher up the field. We didn't implement that plan exactly how we hoped, we rode out luck at times, but we got the job done. Confeds cup means we will have a pretty full calendar for the next 12-18 months so I intend to return to my original plan of developing a more expansive football style"

Sums it up for me 2B.

I don't begrudge the avenue he took to winning this tournament, given the circumstances. However he has done a really poor job at getting that message across to the fans. Why hasn't he just said something like what 2B wrote above?

That's all I needed, personally. 

I can't see any change in the coaching stakes unless Hudson pulls the pin and fudges off. While disappointed with what I saw in PNG and our inability to dominate this level of opposition, I can't see anything else but hope that we get a decent build up to the confeds, get all of the players Hudson wants - fit, available and playing, we get some decent opposition to play in the build up and, we see some decent football finally being played by the team [win or lose].

What I fail to understand is how the Island nations [with supposedly less resources than us], look like they are more competent footballers [despite not beating us] than our lot who have all been through this great development system and with many playing pro football. While happy that the Island nations are on the improve, we should always be ahead of them and if they are catching up, it is down to fudge ups in NZ not some great development programme OFC or FIFA are developing in the region.

Hudson's worrying about negativity from supporters - but he should be more concerned about indifference. The negativity's coming from the minority who actually watch the game. Most of the rest couldn't give a monkeys about it. He's not going to win any more support from outside of the football community by trashing those who already do care, but are rapidly running out of patience.

Also, happy anniversary NZF - sorry we're two weeks late - it's been two years and fifteen days since the All Whites played at home.

Great stuff.

I think Hudson just isn't good enough to force an ideology onto the players so they just went back to what they are used to. 

Regardless, saying the team 'got the job done' is silly when you need a penalty shoot out to win. I would be way more forgiving if we somehow lost the final 2-1 due to bad luck if the team looked well coached. I don't think we have any chance of making it in 2018.

One month short of celebrating 14 years since we last played Australia at home......

Even so, he had a big camp with most of the players, yet we still didn't look like we knew what we were doing.  If you are playing long ball, you need some kind of structure.  You need someone quick running off your target man, or midfielders coming forward looking to receive the ball from the target man who has his back to goal, or wingers bombing down the flank to collect the through ball or be available to again receive from the target man.  We had none of that.  We looked like a team bunch of guys without a coach, without a strategy, who were just pumping it long when we got it, hoping for a long throw, and sitting in with with 5 at the back plus 2 screening midfielders when under any pressure.

We weren't just playing route 1, we were playing route 1 badly.

All I can say is that it is probably a good thing for Hudson we never play any home friendlys any more. Can you imagine actually paying money to watch that stuff live?

He's such a contrary prick that we'll probably play like Brazil in home friendlies then revert to hoofball soon as the result actually matters.

If Germany can have 68% possession vs Ukraine, then we could go 90 minutes without touching the ball.....

Yeah, if he was offered before the tournament to put the Confeds on the line for a shoot out against PNG they would have said no, we'll play the tournament thanks.  So he has clearly underperformed

That sort of turgid football is not  good demo of young player talent. Whether you believe it or not, Declan edge talks about how challenging it was to get Ryan Thomas trials in Europe because of the quality of his appearances in age grade NZ Teams. This sort of anti-football will hurt players who take part.

True. Well that's 10+ completed passes for whoever has that responsibility.

even judged on its own terms the style was ineffective because we didn't score and hardly created chances.  Did we have a shot on target in the final?  If we had won games 2 or 3 nil he would have a leg to stand on but this stuff is just rubbish.