All Whites won’t be sitting back, says Hudson
Thirteen months from now, the All Whites will likely be preparing for the toughest test they’ve ever faced.
That’s the intercontinental playoff for the 2018 World Cup, where the last team standing from Oceania will play the fifth-best team from South America, which would be Argentina if it was played today.
Even if it turns out to be someone else – Chile, Paraguay, Colombia and Ecuador are the others in the mix – it will be a team that is currently ranked inside the world’s top 40, and from a region the All Whites have played against 14 times, losing 11 and drawing three.
To have any chance in that tie, should they play in it, the All Whites will have to be brave, and as they begin their run towards it with a friendly against Mexico in Nashville this morning (NZ time), that’s exactly what they’re going to be, says coach Anthony Hudson.
‘‘We have to be brave, and organised. We won’t be sitting back and sitting on the edge of our box and defending and trying to stop them from scoring.
‘‘We want to try and score goals, and we also want to try and stop them playing. Unless the game dictates it, because sometimes it goes like that, where a team is that good and it has an impact on the way you play, at no time in this game are we going to be sitting back and waiting for them and defending."
It’s a mission statement that suggests the long-ball tactics that were on display at the Oceania Nations Cup in June have been dispensed with, having served their purpose, of winning the tournament and qualifying the team for next year’s Confederations Cup in Russia, in conditions where Hudson believed playing short-passing football to be too great a risk.
It also helps that Hudson can now call on the closest thing he’s ever had to a full squad, with Winston Reid, Clayton Lewis and Deklan Wynne all returning after missing the ONC, and Kosta Barbarouses and Marco Rojas set to play bigger roles than they did there, when they arrived only on the eve of the tournament. Bill Tuiloma and Ryan Thomas are the only sure-fire starters absent.
The biggest questions concern the shape of the team and whether they stick with the 3-5-2 that was used at the ONC, or return to the 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 that was preferred for their friendlies in 2014 and 2015. Neither is necessarily more positive or negative than the other, but playing with three centre backs could provide more defensive solidity, and allow Hudson to include both Andrew Durante and Themi Tzimopolous alongside Reid.
One player who could be in line for a start is 24-year-old fullback Liam Graham, who has been called up for the first time after breaking into the first team at Chesterfield FC, who play in League One in England. He has been on Hudson’s radar for a while now and his new coach is excited to see what he can do.
‘‘He’s trained really well, he’s fitted in with the group, he’s confident and I think with a few of the younger players – the Clayton Lewises and the Deklan Wynnes, these guys that have made their debuts – they’ve taken their chance and they’ve grabbed their opportunity, and I’m confident Liam will do the same."
Mexico have left several big names out of their squad, including former Manchester United star Javier Hernandez, but still have plenty of attacking threats, the most notable being Giovani dos Santos.