Swiss coach set to take over All Whites
It is understood Swiss coach Fritz Schmid will be announced as the new man in charge of the All Whites today.
He has followed New Zealand Football on Twitter while tweeting goodbye to Malaysia, where he held the post of national technical director until last year.
Schmid previously worked as an assistant coach for the Austrian national team, where he would have rubbed shoulders with NZ Football technical director Andreas Heraf.
NZ Football has called a press conference for 2pm today in Auckland to announce the new coach, ending a three-month search for Anthony Hudson’s successor, whose contract expired last November, in the wake of the All Whites’ World Cup qualifying playoff loss to Peru.
His first assignment will be a friendly against Canada in Spain next month that will be played behind closed doors - the beginning of a four-year journey towards the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
A panel consisting of Heraf, NZ Football chief Andy Martin, a board member, and a High Performance Sport official was responsible for conducting interviews.
A squad for the Canada match has to be selected by March 4, per Fifa regulations, which means it won’t be long before fans get a glimpse at Schmid’s vision for the team.
Four players - Andrew Durante, Glen Moss, Rory Fallon and Shane Smeltz - have retired since November, which means there will be a chance for Schmid to introduce some fresh blood into the squad
The majority of Schmid's career has been spent as an assistant, predominantly to fellow Swiss Christian Gross.
who faced Peru.
A new coach should also mean a clean slate. Goalkeeper Jake Gleeson and forward Tyler Boyd are two professionals who were out of the picture under Hudson, but could now return. Hudson also had a tendency to favour players who had spent plenty of time learning his way of playing, so some of his favourites could find themselves slipping down the pecking order in a new regime.
The appointment of Schmid comes four weeks after the appointment of Des Buckingham and Jose Figueira as his assistants, roles they have taken on in addition to being the national under-20 and under-17 coaches respectively.
It remains to be seen if Schmid will want to bring in any additional staff, but his acceptance of the role can be taken to mean he has no issue with Buckingham and Figueira’s presence.
The majority of Schmid’s career has been spent as an assistant, predominantly to fellow Swiss Christian Gross.
He joined Gross at Grasshopper in 1995 as a fitness coach, before attempting to follow him to Tottenham Hotspur for the 1997-98 English Premier League season, only for his application for a work permit to be denied.
He branched out on his own from there, obtaining his pro licence in Italy and spending two seasons as head coach for Swiss second-division side SC Kriens, but rejoined Gross at Basel in 2002. They spent seven seasons together there, winning four Super League titles.
From there he jumped over to that job in Austria for two years, before spending the last four years in Malaysia.
Although the All Whites will have one fixture in place by the time he arrives on Friday, uncertainty surrounds the fixture list over the next two years. Their next competitive assignment is set to be the Oceania Nations Cup, which should be held in June 2020, with the region’s World Cup qualifying tournament to follow, culminating in an intercontinental playoff that will likely take place in March 2022.