Herbert regrets s
AFTER his tenure as All Whites coach ended in 2013, Ricki Herbert spent three years seizing opportunities in far-flung locations – India, Papua New Guinea, and the Maldives.
But now that he’s back coaching in New Zealand for the first time in four years, he does wonder what might have happened had he gone abroad earlier.
‘‘I probably stayed loyal to the national team, and I probably stayed loyal to the Phoenix when I shouldn’t have, off the back of 2010,’’ he said.
‘‘I probably regret that, because I did have very good opportunities to move on – South Africa, there was a very good opportunity to me to coach there, in the main league. I flew across, I’d arranged and I’d agreed everything, but in my heart I was attached to the club I’d started with Terry [Serepisos] and to a national team I’m still very proud of.’’
When Herbert did move on, it was at the end of a year that began with him resigning from the Wellington Phoenix, the club he’d help build from nothing, and finished with the All Whites being beaten by Mexico in a World Cup playoff, a result that meant his contract was up.
First he went to India, where he helped get NorthEast United up and running in the Indian Super League, then to Papua New Guinea, where he coached the national under-23 team to third place at the Pacific Games, and then to the Maldives, to coach their national team, who he got above the All Whites in the Fifa rankings at one point.
‘‘I’d coached so much in New Zealand and I really wanted to be abroad,’’ said Herbert, whose global profile was boosted by the All Whites’ unbeaten run at the 2010 World Cup, where they drew with Slovakia, Italy and Paraguay.
‘‘For whatever reason, it opened up doors and I managed to go through them, and it’s continued to open those doors, really – I’m still currently doing, right at this red-hot minute, the analysis for Fifa for the under-17 World Cup, I did the under-20s, I went to Brazil for the senior World Cup. Those doors would never have opened if I hadn’t resigned, or if I hadn’t finished with the national team. One door sort of slams in your face, another opens.’’
Herbert left his post at the Maldives in June last year, and returned to New Zealand to be with his mum, Shirley, who died after a battle with cancer that August. He then settled in Cambridge at the start of this year, where he is in charge of the football programme at St Peter’s, a local private school.
He may have left both the Phoenix and the All Whites on a down note, but Herbert’s name still carries plenty of weight in the New Zealand football community, more than three decades after he first rose to prominence, as a key player in the 1982 World Cup campaign.
When Hamilton Wanderers