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Kiwi Soccer

gonzalo

gonzalo

Midfield
As someone who likes watching seemingly pointless international friendlies, as it gives you a window into other footballing cultures, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at NZ soccer, the All Whites.

What a strange team.

Pretty much guaranteed world cup qualification as they can scud teams like the Solomon Islands and Marshall Islands left, right and centre, and then as soon as they come up against a team remotely challenging the difficulty level expands exponentially.

Anyone know anything about these lads? Should they do what the Aussies did and migrate to the AFC? Or are they happy with their lot? Must be bloody boring being a NZ soccer fan.
 

Lived there for almost ten years and I can only remember them playing at home once, 0-0 against Peru. I think most of the time they have friendlies they tend to be in Europe too

A lot of the island nations had players I played with at social level playing for them. Standard was poor.
 
Michael Woud was in our academy a few years ago. My SiL is a Kiwi and he doesn’t know much about them either

It’s a rugby playing country, union for the posh schools and the rural farming types, league amongst the working class and the largely Tongan and Samoan immigrants.
 
NZMackem92 said:
Lived there for almost ten years and I can only remember them playing at home once, 0-0 against Peru. I think most of the time they have friendlies they tend to be in Europe too

A lot of the island nations had players I played with at social level playing for them. Standard was poor.
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Just looked; they’ve had three games in New Zealand in two years, what the hell.

Such an anomaly.
 
NZMackem92 said:
Something to do with a streamer or YouTuber wanting to get everyone to back a random player. Bit like the Mexicans with us last season
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This. It was some Argentinian football blogger / influencer. He identified which player at the WC had the least Instagram followers and it was Tim Payne. He had less than 5k followers at the time and now he has over 4 million!
 
gonzalo said:
As someone who likes watching seemingly pointless international friendlies, as it gives you a window into other footballing cultures, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at NZ soccer, the All Whites.

What a strange team.

Pretty much guaranteed world cup qualification as they can scud teams like the Solomon Islands and Marshall Islands left, right and centre, and then as soon as they come up against a team remotely challenging the difficulty level expands exponentially.

Anyone know anything about these lads? Should they do what the Aussies did and migrate to the AFC? Or are they happy with their lot? Must be bloody boring being a NZ soccer fan.
Click to expand...

What's NZ soccer... football ⚽️?
 
gonzalo said:
Crazy to think he’s probably their best football player of all time, must be odd being Chris Wood
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Yep. Crazy that he’s so much better than anyone they’ve probably ever had. Their second top scorer is the very well renowned Vaughan Coveny who made his name with South Melbourne in the late 90’s 🤷‍♂️
 
gonzalo said:
Crazy to think he’s probably their best football player of all time, must be odd being Chris Wood
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Winston Reid or Ryan Nelson were decent PL footballers in this time as well tbf.

They have themselves a team in the Aussie League these days, so as a rich sporty country I reckon we'll see the standard improve over time - especially with the riches to be made in european football/ the potentially fall off of global rugby (and the earnings that come with that). The FIFA World Club Championship money isn't being profit shared by the league as well I think - which should mean there's more money sloshing around the domestic league then ever before as well.
 
HarrogateMackem said:
Winston Reid or Ryan Nelson were decent PL footballers in this time as well tbf.

They have themselves a team in the Aussie League these days, so as a rich sporty country I reckon we'll see the standard improve over time - especially with the riches to be made in european football/ the potentially fall off of global rugby (and the earnings that come with that). The FIFA World Club Championship money isn't being profit shared by the league as well I think - which should mean there's more money sloshing around the domestic league then ever before as well.
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Yes I saw that Auckland City play in the domestic league so should be good for grassroots there, but they also have Wellington Phoenix playing in the A League. Very odd hybrid mix. Wonder if Wellington can drop into the NZ league and make it more competitive or if Auckland would want to do vice versa.

And I remember Winston Reid at West Ham, a decent CB.
 
HarrogateMackem said:
Winston Reid or Ryan Nelson were decent PL footballers in this time as well tbf.

They have themselves a team in the Aussie League these days, so as a rich sporty country I reckon we'll see the standard improve over time - especially with the riches to be made in european football/ the potentially fall off of global rugby (and the earnings that come with that). The FIFA World Club Championship money isn't being profit shared by the league as well I think - which should mean there's more money sloshing around the domestic league then ever before as well.
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I don’t think any potential fall off in global rugby will impact New Zealand. They have a league side in the NRL, and the vast majority of NRL money comes from the Australian TV deal. Whilst in union, no NZ player can play outside NZ if they want to play for the All Blacks, whilst the vast majority of the money comes from Super Rugby (which is dominated by NZ teams) and their local competition TV deals. NZ doesn’t rely on global rugby revenues in the same way that some other countries do.
 
gonzalo said:
Yes I saw that Auckland City play in the domestic league so should be good for grassroots there, but they also have Wellington Phoenix playing in the A League. Very odd hybrid mix. Wonder if Wellington can drop into the NZ league and make it more competitive or if Auckland would want to do vice versa.

And I remember Winston Reid at West Ham, a decent CB.
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Nah they can’t drop on, it also means the two NZ teams in the A League can’t qualify for the champions league over there.

The domestic league is amateur football, used to play with Island Bay United (cap prem) who share a field with Wellington Olympic who are top of the National League. It’s probably equivalent to level 8 English football. When I left Paul Ifill was still playing and you could see he had a much higher football IQ than the rest of the players and he would have been early 40’s
 
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