As football fanatics start concentrating on the coming thrills and spills in next month’s World Cup Finals in Brazil, Bahrain’s national team coach Anthony Hudson has his sights set on preparing his squad for soccer’s regional golden grail.


The 16th edition of the 2015 Asian Football Confederation Asia Cup Finals will kick off in Melbourne, Australia, the capital city of Victoria, for the first time on January 9 with the opening match featuring the Socceroos against Kuwait.
Following the opening fixture, 32 matches featuring 16 teams from across the Asian region, will be hosted in five cities including Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra and Newcastle. The winner of the tournament will earn the right to compete for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup competition hosted by Russia.
In preparation for the event, Bahrain has finalised training plans to be staged in Ballarat, a regional city in the State of Victoria.
Hudson and the squad will be flying out to ‘the land down under’ for a pre-competition camp, spending 16-days at the new Ballarat Regional Soccer Facility from December 22 to January 7.
Hudson, 32, from Amwaj, believes Bahrain’s team is ready for the challenge. He said: “We’re all very excited. This tournament means a lot to us and to the country. Are we ready for it? We have already been doing it and doing it well. Now it’s all about improving.
“Every game is going to be hard, in my opinion, every opposition will be difficult. So we are in for a great tournament. We will prepare as normal, thorough, with a lot of hard work and try and play with a smile along the way!”
Bahrain will be facing arch-rivals and neighbours Qatar and the UAE in Group C, alongside World Cup finalists Iran.
The national football team of Iran, known as Team Melli, are currently ranked first in Asia and 37th in the world according to recent FIFA World Rankings. Iran has won the AFC Cup three times in 1968, 1972 and 1976. Meanwhile, Bahrain lost a third place play-off to Iran in 2004 and will be hoping to even the score.
Hudson, who will be studying next month’s World Cup Finals to see how Iran and Australia get on, said: “We are up against a strong group. All the games are winnable and all the games are losable, as long as we keep that in mind we can keep our focus on the preparation and go into the tournament in good shape.
“From now, we are following all the teams we are playing leading up to and in the tournament. The Asian Cup and the next World Cup qualifiers start now. It’s important that we build our team, bed in our style of play and perform consistently.
“This will put us in the best position to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time and part of that preparation is the Gulf Cup in November, the Asian Cup and all the international friendlies along the way.”
As reported exclusively in GulfWeekly, Hudson, the son of Chelsea’s former legendary midfielder Alan, had recently returned from Argentina after ‘a study visit’ with some of the country’s top clubs and coaches.
He took in River Plate, Boca Juniors and a chance to discuss tactics with Marcelo Bielsa, the charismatic football club manager who has also successfully coached the national teams of Argentina and Chile.
Olympique de Marseille have announced that Bielsa has agreed a two-year contract and will begin after the 2014 FIFA World Cup. He will be the French Ligue 1 club’s first Argentine coach.
This wasn’t Hudson’s first time travelling afar to seek guidance from a legend, as he worked alongside The Special One, Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho, during his stint with Real Madrid in Spain.
Hudson believes that he has also gained a lot from his Bielsa experience and it will benefit him ‘100 per cent’ during his AFC Cup preparations.
Hudson said: “Marcelo Bielsa is a coach that I have a lot of admiration for. Mainly because of how his sides play, his values as a man and a coach and how he prepares his teams. He is a different type of coach than Mourinho, but both have incredible qualities.”
Hudson is proud to be taking the senior team into major competition after being promoted to lead the squad after winning the fifth Huawei GCC Under-23 Championship and is determined a lack of preparation will not be his downfall after being taught by some of the game’s masters.
He said: “I love this country. I love working with the players. I feel at home here, the Bahrain Football Association have shown a lot of faith in what we are doing and I want to give something back. I’m excited about the future.”
l For more information about the AFC Asian Cup Australia 2015, or to purchase tickets visit www.afcasiancup.com