Soccer: Games plan to keep heat on

New Zealand might get to see the All Whites play at home later in the year as the national body attempts to put together an international programme to maintain momentum of the World Cup success.

It had been feared the All Whites would be inactive for a couple of years after the World Cup because of costs, player unavailability and a lack of meaningful games.

But the landscape has changed - prompting New Zealand Football to seek games over the next 18 months. NZF want to host a game as payback to the New Zealand public and to keep the national side in the country's consciousness.

Playing internationals is expensive but having inactive All Whites could be even more costly in terms of a lost opportunity. All the development programmes in the world, while worthy, won't keep the sport in the national spotlight.

Chief executive Michael Glading said they wanted the All Whites to play two games in October and November, one of them at home.

"We have been mindful of the fact we couldn't get a game at home pre-World Cup so we hope we can make up for that by having a home international later in the year," Glading said.

"In an ideal world we would like to get two games [this year], one against a high-ranking team and another against a lower-ranked team. We are talking to a couple of countries and have a couple of agents looking around for games for us.

"It's arguably a lot easier for us to get games now because we have a lot more credibility than 12 months ago."

The second factor behind a re-think is Oceania changes in qualifying for the Confederations Cup. In the recent past, this has been coupled with World Cup qualification but OFC now want the All Whites to play the winner of the South Pacific Games next year on a home-and-away basis to find the Oceania representative at the Confederations Cup in Brazil in 2013.

That would need a handful of games to ensure New Zealand were ready because missing out on the Confederations Cup would cost a US$1.5 million cheque from Fifa.

NZF oppose the home and away format, citing the defeat of Waitakere United in the Club World Cup qualifiers as an example of what can happen home and away - as opposed to a qualifying campaign.

"That changes things a little," Glading said. "We have to assume that will happen so we have to ensure we peak at the end of 2011. We would like to have four to six internationals throughout 2011 with at least one of them at home. Sometimes that's hard because it's difficult to convince a team to fly halfway round the world."

It costs about $100,000 to bring the All Whites together to play, although that figure was much higher during altitude training in Austria before the World Cup.

The national body might receive a $10 million cheque for playing at the World Cup - 40 per cent of which will go to the players - but have already said they will invest a large chunk as well as put a significant amount into their development programme.

They receive offers from agents representing national sides frequently. Just last year, they turned down an approach to play Argentina because of the cost.

Yet they managed to put together an impressive World Cup campaign with games against Mexico, Australia, Serbia, Slovenia and Chile, all of whom are playing in South Africa.

Midfielder Simon Elliott has urged NZF to put an international programme together.

"For New Zealand to continue what's going on here, you want to be competitive every World Cup cycle," he says.

"For a number of reasons, that hasn't been the case in the past. I would delighted if we could qualify every time because it can only mean good things for the game.

"To get that to happen, the New Zealand team have to play and there aren't a lot of games coming up. I don't know how that fits into the next World Cup cycle.

"There needs to be a programme. We need to play."