All Whites say no to Malaysia event
All Whites coach Fritz Schmid says it would have been ‘‘irresponsible’’ for the team to play in a tournament in Malaysia next month with the fixtures drawn up the way they were, even if they might be inactive for more than 500 days as a result.
As revealed by Stuff earlier this month and announced by the Malaysian Football Association last week, New Zealand Football had expressed interest in taking part in a four-team tournament alongside the hosts, Oman, and Singapore.
But when the details of the tournament were unveiled on Monday, the All Whites were nowhere to be seen, with the Solomon Islands taking their place.
As Schmid sees it, there were two key challenges NZ Football was unable to overcome – the impact of the tournament schedule on player welfare and the clash between the March international window and the semifinals of the national men’s league – though it is believed they were the subject of much internal debate.
NZ Football’s budget restraints are also understood to be a factor, but not majorly so, with Malaysia covering a large percentage of the costs of the competing teams.
The All Whites would have played two matches in the tournament, one on Wednesday, March 20, and one on Saturday, March 23, a departure from the usual practice for an international window, where teams usually play one match on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday and another three days later, on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.
‘‘In our situation, knowing about our travel arrangements, and the difficulties we have to bring in players from all the different corners of the globe, it is very obvious that we have to insist on a certain setup,’’ Schmid said yesterday.
‘‘We have players coming on 20, 25-hour journeys from North America, 12-hour journeys from Europe, 17-hour journeys from Oceania, and unfortunately Malaysia had put the first game day on Wednesday and we were not able to negotiate this.
‘‘Perhaps we did not address this early enough, but consequently we had to look at the situation of a major group of our team coming in on Tuesday and then to put them on the pitch the next day would be not only unprofessional, but irresponsible – we’re talking players health, the risk of injury, our responsibility towards their clubs.
‘‘We know in our situation we need ideally 72 hours, three days. We had that in Spain [where the All Whites lost to Canada last March], we had that in India [last June]. It might be sometimes the case that we need to play after two days of assimilation, and that’s where you work out training load, game load, activities with your medical staff and physios.’’