Schmid vows to keep it simple
The Fritz Schmid era of the All Whites has begun.
The 58-year-old Swiss was unveiled as the team’s new coach yesterday, bringing to an end a three-month search.
He will take charge of them for the first time next month, when they play Canada at the end of a training camp in Spain, and he will begin by taking stock of what he has at hand.
‘‘My coaching philosophy is based on a very simple approach,’’ Schmidt said.
‘‘You have to start where you are, and you have to be aware of where you are coming from. So you assess the performances of the last four or five years, then you have to work with what you get, and then you do the best you can.’’
The All Whites job will be Schmid’s first head-coaching role since 2002 when he was in charge of Swiss second division side SC Kriens.
In the years since, he has served primarily as an assistant, first with FC Basel, then with the Austrian national team, where he crossed paths with New Zealand Football’s technical director, Andreas Heraf.
He left the role with Austria at the end of 2013, and moved to Malaysia, where he was technical director until early last year. He was still living in Malaysia when the All Whites vacancy came to his attention.
Schmid has begun reaching out to players, and was up early yesterday to contact those based in Europe and North America - a group that includes English Premier League stars Chris Wood and Winston Reid.
He will be assisted by Des Buckingham and Jose Figueira, the national under-20 and under-17 coaches, who were appointed to those positions at the end of January. Paul Gothard will remain in place as the team’s goalkeeping coach.
Schmid plans to speak his predecessor Anthony Hudson, now in charge at Major League Soccer club Colorado Rapids, as he begins what he calls ‘‘a project’’ in one of world football’s most challenging environments.
He has recognised that won’t be coming in and working with a clean slate, and he will be guided by his players once they meet next month.
‘‘There has been a process that has been initiated over the past four years, and there are aspects to build on,’’ Schmid said.
‘‘There are fundamental values which have been developed, and I like the challenge to build on that work, and follow up on that work, and have a shot at the World Cup.’’
The chance to have a shot at a World Cup is what attracted Schmid to this role, where he becomes the first All Whites coach with a continental European background since the 1960s.
He addressed his lack of headcoaching experience by offering assurances that he had kept up to speed with developments in modern football, and that he had been heavily involved with the teams where he was an assistant.
He suggested this was now his chance to take everything he had learnt over the years and put it into the practice.
‘‘Through the years, I might have been preparing for this job for a long time,’’ he said.
‘‘Now it’s time to step up and take the role.’’
Schmid will also take charge of the national under-23 team, as Hudson did, and will be charged with trying to qualify them for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
After that will come the challenge of qualifying for the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, and ending what will by then be a 12-year wait.