Rob Sherman, the New Zealand technical director who just stepped down from his post has expressed his optimism for the performance of the all whites in the New Year.
After a particularly challenging period, Sherman believes the team will encounter what he termed as ‘reasonably calm waters’ ahead. Earlier this month, the national body of the team had announced that Sherman would be stepping down from his post as director for personal reasons; he had taken up the position last year in October.
Sherman, who was the head of coach education at Football Federation Australia and a former technical director of the welsh football association, had become the teams technical director after the previous director Fred de Jong had quit in light of the Olympic eligibility issue.
“The organization is performing really well, so much has gone out with the whole of the game. There is a whole raft of things which perhaps don’t attract attention when there are one or two items that do but we need to focus on the positives,” Sherman said.
The saga had caused the Country’s under 23 men’s team to be kicked out of the qualifying tournament in Oceania for the Rio Olympics; this was because the team had fielded an ineligible player. Aside that, there were a host of other problems which the team had encountered in early 2016,the team coach had complained about a lack of matches for his team and was bitter about the soft nature of some of the younger players in the team.
In February 2016, team striker Alex Jones was sent home after they had missed FIFA’s deadline for completion of loan application. However, Sherman believed that while the team had faced some unfortunate occurrences, they were some good work that had been done in a few areas.
“I see reasonably calm waters. There is a clear strategy and direction and they’ll be committed to bring that to life,” the ex-director added.
