It seems those of us who thought that we would lose Michael were right.
Reading the TV3 article and his non-selection for the Japan game, it sounds like to me that he got so irritated by the way Ricki/NZF went about him that he is now using the Japanese Passport / foreign Visa rule to kiss us all a long good bye.
Really annoyed that he is not now going to be in the AW frame as our defending depth has dropped dramatically in recent years from being our strength. Even the Nix are relying on Aussies in this department (Durante, Brindell-South, Caira).
Hopefully the new manager, who I hope is not Emblin (I want a completely clean break from the Herbert era), will be able to mend this and other bridges going forward and see him return to the Kiwi fold.
It's just one of those unfortunate things that he's playing in a league which limits the number of foreigners in each team (doesn't happen of course in most European leagues) so to have any real chance of playing time, he had to take out Japanese citizenship.
He probably would prefer to be able to play for NZ as well as earn his living in the J-League - but he will never be available to play for NZ again until he gives up his Japanese citizenship and takes back his NZ citizenship .This will only happen if he leaves Japan to play in another country, as the TV3 article you reference mentions:
"A dream move to Europe would allow Fitzgerald to play for New Zealand again, but while he's playing in Japan the sun is set on his All Whites career."
This has all been gone over earlier in this thread.
I don't blame Herbert for not selecting Fitzgerald again as I remember him being pretty awful when he did play for the All Whites in three games in 2011. He had only played one season in the third tier of Japanese football at that stage, after youth football in Japan.
Obviously a much better player now and playing regularly at a good level. Also he was only playing centre-back then in 2011 I think and we had plenty of decent ones well ahead of him (Nelsen, Reid, Smith, Sigmund, Vicelich) so he would rarely have been needed.
Now he's been converted to a defensive midfielder for Niigata and is thriving there (sometimes fills in as a centreback) -and of course would be an asset to the All Whites in that position (Tuiloma and Payne the only decent ones we have currently and they are youth team players in club football mostly).
Fingers crossed Fitzgerald moves to an overseas club before the next World Cup qualifiers start for NZ in 2016.
By the way, we are better off than Australia, who have lost several of their best players to Croatia and Serbia especially after they had their early development in Australia. Moved to Europe to play and then changed allegiance to Serbia or Croatia (e.g. three Australians in the Croatia team at the 2006 World Cup - Josip Šimunić, Joey Didulica, Anthony Šerić; Ivan Ergić of FC Basel and Bursaspor, Turkey who opted to play for Serbia). All received their early football training at the Aussie taxpayers' expense at the Australian Institute of Sport.