New Zealand coach Anthony Hudson express his delight at being able to test the team in the friendly matches against Mexico and the United States before the start of the World Cup qualification campaign.
New Zealand are one of the international teams not having a fixture in September. Instead, the team will be playing in use against Mexico and the United States in the first half of October. This will be used as a preparation for the oceanic World Cup qualifying group stages, which begin in November with a home match against New Caledonia.
After having successfully negotiated the second round of oceanic World Cup qualification, New Zealand will come up against New Caledonia and Fiji. Unlike the other two opponents, New Zealand have the ability to improve themselves when they come up against such tough teams. Fiji andNew Caledonia do not have any preparatory matches going into these tough qualification games. Hudson says that the players are extremely serious about making it into the World Cup 2018 in Russia. Since taking over the national team in 2014, Hudson has been working towards the single aim of achieving qualification. New Zealand shocked the world when they appeared at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
“The players want a serious chance to go to Russia, this window shows we are serious about it.We are showing our intent, that we want to do things properly.We certainly won’t go into these games trying not to lose, we want to be competitive and show people we are a serious team because we believe we are.We need to be in front of big crowds, in difficult environments. The test for us is the away leg next November. I’m sure we are not going to get any favours, it is a challenge and that is what we need,” said Hudson.