Throughout the entire history of the New Zealand national football team, they have consistently had to settle with the group stages of the FIFA Confederations Cup.
1999, 2003 and 2009 are the all of the previous editions of the FIFA Confederations Cup that New Zealand has managed to qualify and in every single one of them, they have not been able to get past the group stages.
New Zealand has qualified for the latest edition of the FIFA Confederations Cup which is the 2017. They were pitted in group A where they have to compete against the likes of: Russia, Portugal and Mexico.
Anthony Hudson is the head coach of the New Zealand national football team and he talked about the approaching challenge of not only making it past their group stages curse but also making a memorable campaign as the 36 year old American manager said:
“We want to go there, not just to take part, we want to go there and really do something significant. Our ranking is what it is, that’s down to the state of where we’ve been over the last three years, although we have been very good recently.”
“I think it’s important that our top players that they come in and set the tone, which they do anyway, and give us a lift. The other players look up to them, they definitely have a positive influence on the group, but we’re building a really really good team spirit, everyone’s playing for each other and I think those guys are doing really well in their clubs careers and they have a different type of role’’
Anthony Hudson and his squad have their work cut out for them trying to compete against their opponents in group A with the likes of: Portugal, Mexico and Russia but they have a realistic chance of advancing through the knockout stages and breaking their curse of not progressing past the group stages.