Fifa Women’s World Cup 2023: Beach football coaching guru Angelo Schirinzi’s tips for Football Ferns

Angelo Schirinzi: "You have to have a strategy with the team." Photo / Getty Images

Fifa’s top beach football coaching guru Angelo Schirinzi has some advice for the Football Ferns about how to approach a World Cup when you’re an underdog.

Switzerland’s beach football coach is used to working with longshot teams, but has proved success can come from anywhere, even at a World Cup. From 2013 to 2017, Schirinzi coached Tahiti to three World Cups, finishing fourth in his first year and twice as runners-up. Before he got involved, the Tahitians had never made it out of the group stage.

“You have to have a strategy with the team,” Schirinzi told the Herald. “When I started with Tahiti, the team was nice but of course they had no experience or nothing.

“So, I was thinking to myself, what is the advantage of this place? We found out the goalkeeper was really good, so we started playing more with him.”

The Football Ferns’ run at their first home World Cup will be tough and, four months out, preparations haven’t gone to plan. But Schirinzi says they shouldn’t be ruled out and once New Zealand are in the moment, playing at a home World Cup, they had to “put away the pressure and have fun”.

“Football is a game, you need to play it so if I go in and be controlling, that’s the wrong attitude,” Schirinzi said.

“We need to have fun and to play and to enjoy and do everything that we trained. If you do this with an open head you will be more successful.”

He added that the 24th-ranked Football Ferns need to focus on “hard work”. “That’s the first thing; you have to play the game every day.”

Currently in Auckland promoting the benefits and rise of his niche code of beach football, Schirinzi said it helps when the governing body is backing you.

“In Tahiti, the president had a clear wish, maybe in football we’ll never win anything but maybe in futsal or beach soccer, maybe there’s a possibility - they invested in the sport,” said Schirinzi. “They brought the team to Europe, and I trained them there and we had a lot of matches. This helps for improving.”

Paul Toohey, the Oceania Football Confederation head of football development, also told the Herald that a successful Football Ferns team at this home World Cup could “inspire a generation”.

“It’s incredible really. I think the impact is going to be huge. Winning creates a reference for the kids - If you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” Toohey said.

“And we’ve often seen that in previous World Cups... and it can inspire a whole nation,” he said, citing the South Korean men who finished fourth at home in 2002.

Seeing the game at that level could motivate somebody to say “I want to do that”, Toohey said - whether that’s playing, coaching, refereeing or in administration.

“Even the matches being played in our own time zone will make a huge difference because families can watch together. It’s going to be amazing; we’re not far away.”