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New Zealand coach Ricki Herbert, left, and captain Ryan Nelsen reacts after their team's 1-0 win over Bahrain in the World Cup qualifying playoff second leg soccer match at Westpac Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009. (AP Photo/NZPA, Ross Setford)
For a guy who has never played in Australia’s old National Soccer League, New Zealand Football chief executive Frank van Hattum is sounding very old soccer at the moment.
With most of the world looking at New Zealand’s participation in South Africa with cynical eyes, van Huttum seems to have decided to forgo professionalism in his public comments.
Shortly after the World Cup draw was made, the former New Zealand international challenged Australia to a pre-tournament friendly.
“They keep running away from us, the buggers, they’re chicken shit,” said van Hattum.
“We’ve asked but they were qualified some time ago, there’s a possibility and we’ve got a great relationship with them, they help us quite a bit to be fair and we’d love to play them.
“We’d love to get the thing going again.
“Once again, they’ll probably get beaten by the odd goal and they’ll go back to all the excuses they used to do in the old days.”
Top stuff that. It’s like someone stole van Hutton’s lunch money and he’s now having a fit in the primary school play ground. Can you imagine Ben Buckley referring to another football nation as ‘chicken shit’ even if it was jokingly? It’s just not how someone in that position conducts themselves.
All White fans should also be worried about their football chief’s idea of an ideal opponent to prepare them for their first World Cup in 28 years. New Zealand needs to come to terms with the brand of football played by their Group F opponents (Italy, Paraguay and Slovakia), not the Socceroos’ style.
While a friendly between the two nations might be a bit of fun, I certainly don’t want Pim Verbeek preparing his team for a high quality competitive tournament by playing New Zealand. That would be a huge mistake.
Still van Huttun wasn’t yet done because he soon started bragging about ‘interest’ in playing New Zealand from other nations.
“I just whispered (to the German delegation) that we play very much like Australia and they said, ‘Yeah, we know that, we might be talking to you’,” van Huttun said.
“Slovenia want a game and China want a game, Mexico want a game, so there’s lots of opportunities coming forward and we’ve got a couple of other opportunities in Europe as well.
“We’re going to the biggest event in the world so we need to really start thinking and doing things 100 per cent professionally.”
Funny you should say that Frank. Having spoken privately with high-level staff at Football Federation Australia I know that they are already in talks with a number of nations about some pre-tournament friendlies, including the MCG send-off, but you don’t see Ben Buckley running around telling everyone. It’s just not the done thing.
I’ve never been too keen on the All Whites’ World Cup qualification to begin with as I feel that New Zealand would be better off moving into Asia then just making up the numbers in South Africa.
That said, the World Cup is an opportunity for the game in New Zealand to move forward and New Zealand Football needs to seize upon the momentum from qualifying.
One way they could do so is by trying to join Asia, but the region is hardly going to keel over and let them in. For that to happen van Hutton and his counterparts at New Zealand Football need to convince Asia they have something to gain out of allowing them in (in truth I don’t think they do). These recent comments from van Huttun are hardly the way to do that.
New Zealand football needs to do everything it can to earn respect and not let itself down at the World Cup. Lets hope van Hattum’s comments aren’t going to set the tone of the country’s journey to South Africa.
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