Reputations are dictating the agenda
COMMENT: Reputation management is a favourite pastime for a lot of people involved in football.
Players, coaches, managers and administrators the world over have been able to carve out handy careers, despite a scarcity of talent or competence.
So it should come as little surprise that those involved in the ongoing
New Zealand Football (NZF) debacle are attempting to position themselves to come out of the saga smelling like roses, or at least hoping they can remove some of the mud being slung, before it sticks to them.
That was apparent yesterday when former
NZF technical director Andreas Heraf claimed the New Zealand media had compared him to Adolf Hitler.
That was kind of fair enough, given one column did refer to him as an ‘‘Austrian football dictator’’. People can pretend it wasn’t a reference to the Austrian-born Hitler, but if you’re going to use the words ‘Austrian’ and ‘dictator’ in the space of three words, you need to be prepared to be accused of comparing someone to other Austrian dictators.
That accusation grabbed the headlines, but of greater interest should be what Heraf was trying to do in the rest of the interview with Sky Sports Austria.
In it, he again accused the Football Ferns of not having the mentality to win matches, that participation was more important for them. He said the player-led culture was the blame for his dismissal.
‘‘I was a bit surprised that it is common practice that the athletes want or have a say in different things,’’ he said in the translated version of the story.
It was the players’ fault, not his unwillingness to learn, or adapt to a new culture.
What he is doing is trying to rebuild his reputation and take back the headlines in international media organisations such as the BBC and the Guardian, the latter of which read ‘‘New Zealand women’s football coach resigns amid alleged ‘toxic culture’.’’
The same is going on back in New Zealand.
Nothing has been heard of former chief executive Andy Martin since his departure, but members of the NZF board, known as the Executive Committee, are moving to ensure their positions and reputations are maintained, when employment lawyer Phillipa Muir releases a report into her review of the governing body’s conduct and culture.
The board has decided to hold a summit with key stakeholders in the game to discuss the best way forward for the code.
It would be a great idea to hold that after they receive Muir’s report. Take the recommendations from the report and discuss them with the New Zealand football public. The report is expected to be released in the next couple of weeks.
Unfortunately, the summit is happening this Saturday.
What the summit really is is a backside covering, reputationmanagement exercise by the NZF board.
What certain people on the board, led by president Deryck Shaw, are trying to do is preempt the review, which many expect to be critical of the board’s conduct during Martin’s tenure.
The board has been out of touch with the game for too long, allowing Martin almost free rein to make some questionable decisions, including hiring Heraf, without enough accountability or oversight.
Shaw was not on the board when Martin was hired in February 2014, but has been president since June 2015, setting the tone since then. The summit is largely his idea, backed by his supporters on the board.
The agenda is filled with wishy-washy ‘‘activities’’ like ‘‘creating shared aspirations for the future’’ and ‘‘reconnecting with our common purpose for football’’.
What the board wants to do with the summit is to be able to say, when the Muir review comes out, something along the lines of: ‘‘we acknowledge we were out of touch with the game, but we’ve already moved to change that’’.
Shaw has a good reason to want to keep his position, as he is understood to be keen on the Oceania Football Confederation presidency, which brings a seat on the Fifa council, as well as status as a Fifa vice-president.
An election will be held at the end of the term in 2019. If Shaw can hold his position as NZF president until then, he can have another crack at the OFC gig.
All of this isn’t to say those contributing to the summit shouldn’t do so in good faith and hope their concerns are heard, but they should go into it with their eyes wide open to what it is really all about.