Football Ferns coach ready for quickfire Tokyo build-up

FOOTBALL Ferns coach Tom Sermanni is preparing for a short build-up to the Tokyo Olympics and it will likely be June, at the earliest, before he can get his team together.

International windows are scheduled for February, April and June, ahead of the women’s tournament at the Olympics, scheduled to start on July 21, but the prospects of the Ferns playing in the first two are extremely unlikely.

‘‘If you’d asked me a couple of months ago, I would have said, look, ‘I think by April, we’ll be doing some stuff’,’’ Sermanni said. ‘‘But I’m less optimistic about that now and probably in the back of mymind, looking at June, and the way Covid seems to be going in certain countries, it’s really difficult to predict.’’

The Ferns were last in action in March, when they took part in Portugal’s Algarve Cup which finished without its final taking place as the scale of the pandemic became clear.

Sermanni said it was ‘‘completely a real possible scenario’’ that the team might not get together before the eve of the Olympics themselves – provided they are able to be held at all.

Cases of Covid-19 have surged in Tokyo in recent days, prompting the declaration of a state of emergency, but Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has insisted the Olympics will go ahead in a ‘‘safe and secure’’ manner after being postponed from 2020.

Sermanni said it had been difficult being inactive for the past 12 months, but acknowledged it was the same for most teams around the world.

‘‘It’s like anything, there are pluses and minuses, and I think the big plus for us is the fact that our squad is a really tight squad and the players know each other really well, they’ve played with each other for a long period of time, and they’ve got a great environment ... so when we get back together again, it’s not so much restarting or rebuilding. I think we’ve got a big advantage over a lot of other teams in that space.

‘‘The challenge that we have compared to some of the teams is that if you’re a European country at the moment, you can probably still get your team together. You may not be able to play, but you can still get your team together easily because your players are all within spitting distance of each other, they’re all in close proximity and the staff are all in close proximity.’’

The Olympics are the only major event on the horizon for New Zealand’s women’s football teams in 2021, as the Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups that Fifa had initially postponed from 2020 due to Covid have since been cancelled altogether.

The Ferns have been at the last three Olympics and made it to the quarterfinals in 2012.