Verbeek yesterday confirmed he will not continue in his role after the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, citing a desire for a change in direction and to spend more time with his family as the major reasons for his decision to step down.

Buckley said that while Verbeek will be missed, it was important that FFA acts quickly on finding a replacement who could lead Australia not only in next year's Asian Cup in Qatar, but all the way through to the 2014 World Cup.

"For the momentum to continue to build, we have to move as quickly as possible," Buckley said. "We want to get the best person available. We will look in every corner of the world for that person.

"I think it's important that we set ourselves the task of getting the best person for the job regardless of where they hail from."

Buckley also made it explicitly clear that FFA did not want a repeat of the situation in 2007 where a caretaker coach, in that case Graham Arnold, led Australia to the Asian Cup before a highly-credentialled European coach - Verbeek - took control.

"We'd prefer to avoid a caretaker situation, that would be our strong preference and our priority. So that's where our focus is," he said.

"Our priority and our preference is to get a person and a team in place which will focus beyond the Asian Cup and will gear us up for the next round of World Cup qualifiers.

"Remembering that the World Cup qualifiers start in June next year, which is six months earlier than the time period for the last World Cup qualifiers."

Buckley said while Verbeek had only made the decision over the past couple of weeks, FFA had already begun a process of finding a replacement.

"We've certainly started the process of identifying the criteria for coach," he said. "What are the major priorities in that criteria list? Who might be available? We've started that in a preliminary sense.

"We're not a long way down the path to draw up a list of potential candidates. But I have to say, this decision has only taken place in the last little while, so we're ready, but the search will accelerate from now on in."

Buckley said Verbeek, who will take assistant coach Henk Duut with him when he returns to Europe, may be consulted during the process of finding a replacement.

"We have a very close relationship with Pim and we respect his views about people and coaches," said Buckley. "Pim's operated in the wider range of football for many, many years.

"We'll talk to him and get his views on prospective candidates, we'd be foolish not to," he said.

But Buckley denied there was a fixation on getting a coach trained in the Dutch 4-3-3 model, which FFA has adopted as part of a national curriculum which all national teams now play.

He added: "Clearly we've had a good success rate with the Dutch coaching fraternity so far.

"We have to keep that in mind. We've got a system that our players understand, we don't shy away from that, but ultimately, we'll select the best person."