Football Ferns goalscorer Katie Kitching celebrates against Papua New Guinea on April 15. Photo / Getty Images
Aiden McLaughlin for LockerRoom
With qualification for the 2027 Fifa World Cup secured, the Football Ferns now have 14 months to get ready for the tournament in Brazil. It may sound like plenty of time, but head coach Michael Mayne is well aware the time will fly by, and their preparation is already underway.
A second-half header from midfielder Katie Kitching sealed their 1-0 win over Papua New Guinea in the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) qualifying final at North Harbour Stadium last Wednesday night, in what was a nervier occasion than many will have expected.
The Ferns have joined their South American hosts as well as Australia, China, Japan, North Korea, Philippines, and South Korea as nations that have so far qualified for the 10th edition of the 32-team tournament, which will take place between June 24 and July 25 next year.
“We were really, really stoked to get it done and be able to start some planning towards that now,” Mayne, who was appointed as head coach in May last year, says.
Before his appointment, Mayne held coaching roles with the New Zealand Under-17 and U20 women’s teams, as well as being an assistant to former head coach Jitka Klimková. He was among the first coaches in the country to undertake the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) Pro Licence, the globally recognised standard for elite-level coaching in the sport.
Qualification from the OFC means the Ferns, who are currently ranked No 33 in the world, will make their seventh appearance at the World Cup, and their sixth in succession, a run that started at the 2007 tournament in China.
To date, however, they’ve failed to progress past the first part of the competition, something that Mayne and his squad will be fully motivated to change, especially after they became the first host country to be eliminated in the group stage in 2023.
Their opposition won’t be known for some time, with the remaining 24 spots not due to be fully completed until February 2027.
But despite not having a clear idea on who his squad might face in Brazil, Mayne is already looking ahead to what fixtures the Ferns can secure between now and then.
“As soon as that whistle went, I was already having conversations with [New Zealand Football general manager of high performance] Kier Hansen,” Mayne says.
“I’m pretty clear on what those games need to look like and potentially where they need to be and so we’ll go to work now and start to line those up. We’ll fill every fixture window, chasing the opposition we feel like we need right now in the campaign plan, and that’ll be a build towards, ultimately, what we need to do in Brazil.”
Fifa’s international match calendar sees six windows allocated between now and the World Cup; June, October and November/December this year, as well as February/March, April and early June next year, meaning a maximum of 15 games before the action starts on the biggest stage of all.
With current squad players playing in the USA, Canada, England, France, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Australia, as well as New Zealand, it’s a big job to keep everyone connected, but one that Mayne has already been working hard on.
“There’s a lot of positive things that we really squeezed into the last couple of weeks and there’s a lot of foundational stuff that we put in place for the team that hopefully hold us in good stead going forward.”
“We’ve been really clear with the players on how we’ll track them and how I’ll connect with their coaches and them. We did some work around that connection piece, to the team and to the country, that regardless of where the players are at across the world, we now have a way that we can really stay aligned and connected to the programme and this team.
“I think from a playing point of view, the big thing now is the players know what we’re chasing and we’ve got now a bit of a timeframe. Every player is going to be slightly different in terms of their needs and the level they need to be working at. But I think, from my point of view, it’s just making sure that we have really good communication and dialogue around how we can help the players progress and stay aligned to the programme, so that when we come into international windows going forward, it’s pretty seamless.”
Wellington Phoenix players, including Victoria Esson, Grace Jale and Manaia Elliott, now head back to the capital, where their place in the A-League finals is secure. Deven Jackson and Rebekah Stott are in the same position with Melbourne City and it’s that type of pressure that Mayne knows will continue to develop his players who, after a dominant path to the Oceania final, weren’t able to make their possession and number of goalscoring chances count on the scoreboard in the final.
“What we probably saw against Papua New Guinea was that across that squad, there weren’t a lot of players that have played real competition matches. Deven and Rebekah have a wonderful club supporting them, but they’re also winning things. The more players we can get in and around finals football, the pressure is completely different and so I think in our final, with a relatively young squad, they’ve done a really good job to take the experience and manage that, and they had to find a way to win together and they did that.
“I said to them after the huddle, as much as it gave me a few new grey hairs, I know that there’ll definitely be a lot of lessons individually and as a team that will help us going forward as well.”
After the disappointment of not making the knockout stages in their home tournament in 2023, and the 2024 Paris Olympics, where they lost their three group games, Mayne and his staff have worked hard to inject positivity into the group. But ultimately, the hard work starts now as they look to keep the momentum up over the next 14 months.
“I know within the team there’s a huge appetite for us to make sure we get into big games and can compete and score. But we also know that it’s really important for the football community and our supporters back here to see that progress, and they see us doing good things on the world stage against the best.
“There’s a lot of work to do and I’m really happy with where the build-up is at the moment but we’re never satisfied and we’ll keep looking at different ways to do things for us.”
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.