New Zealand coach Ricki Herbert, who guided his unheralded side to three defiant draws at the World Cup, declared yesterday he has rejected a host of lucrative offers to move overseas.
Herbert confirmed he had been tempted by big money contracts from European, Asian and African clubs after the All Whites drew with Italy, Paraguay and Slovakia to finish one point away from qualifying for the last 16.
“One or two were hard to turn down, but I’m very comfortable with my decision,” he said.
He was possibly the lowest paid manager at the World Cup, only earning about US$35,000 a year as All Whites coach on top of his salary as manager of the Phoenix in the Australian A-league, but said loyalty came before money.
“At the end of the day it’s not all about money for me. “It’s loyalty — people may say sometimes the grass may be greener but I don’t think it is,” he said.
Herbert said he had unfinished business to attend to and confirmed he would remain with the Wellington-based Phoenix for three more years from this season. New Zealand Football was also happy for him to continue his dual role as Phoenix and All Whites coach, which had operated for the past three years.
“I have agreed to continue on for the next period for the World Cup [in Brazil 2014] and there’s just some fine tuning” to be done by the Pheonix and New Zealand Football, Herbert said.
Herbert played in the 1982 All Whites — the only other New Zealand team to make the World Cup finals — and did not want to see a repeat of the way the game collapsed in New Zealand after that performance.
“The [post] 1982 collapse for whatever reason, political, ego, that’s the last thing I want to see,” he said. “I think what we have created needs to continue, albeit things offshore can be more attractive etcetera, I think I weighed that up with where we have taken the game [in New Zealand] and where we can continue to take that to.”
Herbert said he also wanted to take the Phoenix to win an A league grand final and get the All Whites to Brazil in 2014.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier