All Whites play misplaced mind games with Peru
OPINION: There is no doubt Anthony Hudson is familiar with the concept of mind games.
After all, one of his idols and mentors, Jose Mourinho, is considered a master of them, using his press conferences to subtly (and not-so-subtly) get his players to lift, or to put pressure on his opponents, or to distract from an issue he doesn’t want to address.
Whether the utterances from Hudson, and from his boss, New Zealand Football chief executive Andy Martin, in the past couple of weeks can be described as mind games is debatable.
But their words do help to create a narrative, and shape the context in which next month’s World Cup qualifying playoff between the All Whites and Peru will take place.
As far as narratives go, this one is pretty simple.
Peru are the heavy favourites, and the All Whites are massive underdogs.
Peru are trying to make it to football’s showpiece event for the first time since 1982, while the All Whites are attempting to make it for the second time in three cycles, albeit for just the third time ever.
Peru is a country where millions of people live and breathe football, and where the national league has been put on hold to allow the national team to prepare, and New Zealand is a country where the national league is getting under way this weekend with a whimper, and where the next month will be a rare time when football captures hearts and minds.
All of the pressure should be on Peru, and none of it on the All Whites, and Hudson, Martin and everyone else should be saying things that help reinforce that.
Instead, Hudson said he wanted Peru as his opponent, and that he’s pleased to be facing them instead of Argentina or Colombia or Chile, despite Peru having a better record than all three of those teams this year – an unbeaten one, in fact.
Peru deserve more respect than they’ve been shown, and not just because their recent results demand it.
Pour the respect on them, as a ‘mind game,’ and make it clear that this tie is theirs to lose.
Feel the heat, and they might not be at their best when they step out onto the field at the Cake Tin on November 11, and if they’re not at their best, that’s the first step in the All Whites pulling off a miracle.
It’s the perfect situation to embrace being the underdog, which is why it’s a shame Hudson so vehemently tried to rid the team of that tag earlier this year.
He reinforced his position last weekend, saying ‘‘we’re not the underdogs any more, we don’t buy into that any more, that’s gone,’’ before going on to sing the praises of having self-belief.
But it’s not an either-or situation. And it’s hard to believe the team can have any belief, when they’ve lost six games out of six against non-Oceania opposition this year, and have only been properly competitive in those games for, at most, 180 minutes out of 540.
Using the media to create a bunker mentality was probably one of the last cards Hudson had left to play, and he’s decided to keep it in his deck, at least for now.
After hearing the calls for a ‘‘hostile’’ welcome, led by Martin, who also made a clumsy reference to the game being ‘‘almost like a war,’’ Peru will be on guard when they arrive here.
They won’t be overconfident – it would have helped the All Whites if they were – and they probably won’t be feeling the pressure as much as they could have been – which is a pity.