Jitka Klimkova quit but New Zealand football wants more of her

Football Ferns coach Jitka Klimkova is leaving with three years left on her contract of her own accord, she was not pushed out, according to New Zealand Football.

After months of turmoil, Klimkova finally ended her Football Ferns coaching career on Friday when she officially stepped down.

But she will remain in New Zealand football for another six months in a different role supporting the high performance department and national team operations.

She came to New Zealand on a six-year contract – the first time a coach had been offered such a long spell in charge.

Klimkova was hired with two FIFA World Cup cycles in mind, but she has left after a disappointing showing at the 2023 World Cup in New Zealand co-hosted by Australia.

Her resignation has been drawn out and New Zealand Football chief executive Andrew Pragnell said the organization would reflect on how it was handled.

Klimkova initially stepped down from the Football Ferns temporarily in May – just days before the team was due to play Japan in Spain – due to an employment-related matter.

An investigation was commissioned by New Zealand Football and carried out by an independent workplace investigator and Klimkova was cleared to return in June. Only she never did.

Less than three weeks after giving her the go-ahead to guide the Football Ferns at another major tournament – the Olympics – the coaching duties were instead taken up by assistant coach Michael Mayne.

“Employment investigations are always tricky,” Pragnell said.

“You have to respect everyone’s rights, you have to give people space and time so that these things don’t always play quite naturally with international sports matches,” he said of the defender and forward since May.

“It is 100 per cent her own decision that she has done three years at the helm, won our first ever game in the senior World Cup, transferred 18 new football ferns to the team and she goes with our best wishes.”

Is Pragnell comfortable with Klimkova remaining in the wider New Zealand women’s programme? “Absolutely.”

Can she leave before six months if a better offer comes along? “I hope she doesn’t go.”

Pragnell wanted to drill into Klimkova’s “institutional knowledge” during the next six months she was still there.

“With head coaches, you hire them and then when they leave they take all their staff, they take all their knowledge and they move on and we really want to go into a period of campaign planning [for the next world cup] Jitka brings a huge amount of institutional knowledge with her and we want to make sure we get the best of that … she can bring a lot of technical and tactical knowledge to that.”

Pragnell said he was a “big believer in continuity” but the next coach would “usually” get a four-year contract.

A new manager will not be announced until next year, with Mayne staying on as interim manager in the meantime.

“I really think having a coach until 2027 will be key,” Pragnell said of the next appointment.

He wanted a coach to be recruited to fit with the team’s long-term plan rather than the other way around.

Pragnell said New Zealand Football needed to do more to support coaches at all levels of the game from the grassroots to the national teams.

Despite the Football Ferns having a history of high turnover with the coaching staff, Pragnell still believed the role would be attractive to potential candidates.

Getting everyone on and off the field on the same page was the way forward according to Pragnell.

“I think the biggest piece is the adaptation in all of this, we had a campaign plan until 2023 (the World Cup) but I think looking back on it it could have been more robust and if you get a plan in place that has adaptation from the national team player right through to the boardroom about what we want to see in terms of performance metrics, not just on the pitch but at all levels, whether it’s tactics, culture or anything else is the most critical attribute and getting full alignment in that space will to be where we put a lot of energy in the coming months.”

How far apart the players and the boardroom were, Pragnell did not know.

“There’s still work to be done until we do the process, it’s hard for me to say. I think we have a really long-term plan around our player development, what the squad can look like in 2027 is the key to all of that.”

Mayne would be involved in the planning and in contact with the current playing group but he would not be doing it alone.

“There’s certainly some organizational responsibility that we’ll be reaching out to the entire playing squad, spread out around the world as they are, in October and November to get the campaign planning going and get them involved and get their buy-in in the process as well .”