Football: NZF shambles leaves Burma trip forgotten

New Zealand are ranked 136, sandwiched between Swaziland and Thailand. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

In two days, the All Whites will be playing an international.

Unless you are a dedicated New Zealand football fan you probably don't know the national side are in Burma (Myanmar) preparing to play that country in Rangoon on Monday night.

New Zealand are ranked 136, sandwiched between Swaziland and Thailand, 61 places lower than the Faroe Islands, eight behind Belize - no cheating now, where is Belize? - and 17 behind St Kitts and Nevis. We know where they are, but these are difficult times for New Zealand Football.

In their release announcing the squad, plus 10 support staff, heading to the one-off match, is this sentence: "Deklan Wynne and Storm Roux were not available for selection due to an ongoing legal process."

And here we have the real problem for NZF. Their mishandling over player eligibility issues around the Olympic qualifying tournament in Papua New Guinea, which will almost certainly cost them a trip to the Olympics next year, is a blight on them and is set to have far-reaching consequences.

The heavy, dead hand of Fifa, in the form of the Oceania Football Confederation, is unlikely to change its mind at appeal time, and New Zealand is looking at a spell in the football wilderness all because due diligence was not done on the eligibility of players.

Even if NZF's case is persuasive, which it does not appear to be, Fifa-overseen organisations don't exactly have a storied history of overturning their decisions.

Vanuatu protested South African-born Wynne was ineligible after losing their semifinal 2-0.

Oceania say Wynne was ineligible due to article 7 of the Fifa statutes, which relates to people getting a new nationality; NZF say he's fine under article 6.

Don't worry about the intricacies of those for now. That'll come later.

The point is, heard much about the Burma trip this week? No, and that can only partly be put down to the saturation coverage of All Blacks and their World Cup preparations this week.

The feeling you can be left with is that, perhaps unfairly, the All Whites by extension don't matter right now, that NZF's stock has taken a heavy fall out of the under-23 shambles.

NZF sought and received a delay to their hearing with the OFC, due to their "preferred legal counsel" not being able to attend.

But this is stalling what has a whiff of inevitability to it.

Myanmar are ranked 162. The All Whites, even shorn of players like Chris Wood, Glen Moss, Ryan Thomas and Tommy Smith, should win.

West Ham's Winston Reid will be there, along with veteran striker Shane Smeltz, Michael McGlinchey and Marco Rojas plus a large core of up and comers.

But beating Myanmar won't remove the black cloud over NZF.