It was an embarrassment, not because we lost heavily but because we decided we wouldn’t play. At the Azteca we showed to the world that we are too scared to play football, we have so little confidence in our ability to play this game that we turned up refusing too and instead just tried to clog the goal up so much the Mexicans wouldn’t be able to squeeze the ball through. Our tactic was intellectually handicapped.
There’s no reason here to be kind. NZ Football is culpable for being utterly incompetent in allowing the best of our footballers to be humiliated by such an inept game strategy. That disgusting display had nothing to do with the talent of our squad, it was all about a totally dumbass, defeatist tactical approach.
How can our self-confidence be so low that we go out deliberately not wanting to play? As long as this is the intellectual quotient of those running football in New Zealand, the game here is deservedly doomed. At the Azteca today the football strategy of kick and hope, that approach that has been the story of New Zealand football for 30 years now, was buried once and for all. We must never go on to the football field as intellectually bereft as that again. There is no way Sport New Zealand should waste a cent of taxpayer money on this rubbish – the game is in crisis in NZ
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