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Kiwi Soccer

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.
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Just seen recently that Cape Verde are in the World Cup Finals. I though that country consisted of half a dozen hotels and an airstrip.😳
 

NZMackem92 said:
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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Brilliant then you have quite a unique perspective then. Does it matter much practically that you have the A League teams challenging the domestic teams for support? Is there much competition between the two systems?

Or will Australian and European clubs always hoover up any and all decent talent so it doesnt matter anyway?
 
gonzalo said:
Brilliant then you have quite a unique perspective then. Does it matter much practically that you have the A League teams challenging the domestic teams for support? Is there much competition between the two systems?

Or will Australian and European clubs always hoover up any and all decent talent so it doesnt matter anyway?
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No challenge for support and no competition between the two. in Wellington everyone (who cares) will follow Phoenix. The domestic league doesn’t have attendances or tickets. Welly Olympic play at Wakefield Park which anyone can just go down and watch. So mainly players who’ve been playing earlier in the day will hang about with a pint and watch the game. Olympic also have a good base of Greek support as they are founded by Greeks.

The Welly Phoenix academy invite players to play but they have to pay to be part of the academy so families can end up forking out a fair bit of money just to have their kid in the system, so this prices out a lot of people unfortunately.
 
NZMackem92 said:
No challenge for support and no competition between the two. in Wellington everyone (who cares) will follow Phoenix. The domestic league doesn’t have attendances or tickets. Welly Olympic play at Wakefield Park which anyone can just go down and watch. So mainly players who’ve been playing earlier in the day will hang about with a pint and watch the game. Olympic also have a good base of Greek support as they are founded by Greeks.

The Welly Phoenix academy invite players to play but they have to pay to be part of the academy so families can end up forking out a fair bit of money just to have their kid in the system, so this prices out a lot of people unfortunately.
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That’s unfortunate, they have a similar problem in America iirc. Makes no sense when historically and culturally football has been the sport of the unwashed masses

J Doughnut said:
My mate would shout you down and bore you with a lecture about Wynton Rufer...but we are old 😀
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Showing myself up here because I have no idea who this is 😂
 
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...
Soccer 🤮🤮🤮🤮
 
Gloucester said:
Just seen recently that Cape Verde are in the World Cup Finals. I though that country consisted of half a dozen hotels and an airstrip.😳
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They’re nearly all diaspora kids. Huge population in Portugal and a decent amount of em in France, Netherlands and the US.

Best two players are regulars for Benfica (Cabral RB) and Villareal (Costa CD) who will both be in next seasons CL again. They’ve lads at Sporting Lisbon, Steau Bucharest, PSG, Swansea, Blackburn, Trabzonspor, Zwolle, Ludogrets, Sparta Rotterdam etc.
Plus a few at the littler top flight Portuguese and Dutch clubs. Basically the sort of places SAFC were looking for players from last summer. Cabral and Costa are the only two close to PL standard at the moment though.
 
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Darlo1973 said:
Tommy is now at Braintree Town. Can't be many non-league players to have gone to a World Cup.

I can't even remember Michael Woud
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Braintree could be saved because of Tommy Smith, they mention in the last financial figures that this season they could actually make a profit and wipe out a lot of their debt due to the FIFA payments. Sure they are currently banned from signing players due to making a loss and were relegated.

I don’t agree with extending the World Cup as it’s done purely to get Infantino more votes but it’s great for players.
 
riffraff said:
They’re nearly all diaspora kids. Huge population in Portugal and a decent amount of em in France, Netherlands and the US.

Best two players are regulars for Benfica (Cabral RB) and Villareal (Costa CD) who will both be in next seasons CL again. They’ve lads at Sporting Lisbon, Steau Bucharest, PSG, Swansea, Blackburn, Trabzonspor, Zwolle, Ludogrets, Sparta Rotterdam etc.
Plus a few at the littler top flight Portuguese and Dutch clubs. Basically the sort of places SAFC were looking for players from last summer. Cabral and Costa are the only two close to PL standard at the moment though.
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Cabral mention, embarrassing game vs Fulham PTSD awakened.

Cheers riff raff lad
 
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...

They wouldn't qualify for a World Cup through the AFC, the Aussies only just made it through. It's a lot tougher.
 
gonzalo said:
That’s unfortunate, they have a similar problem in America iirc. Makes no sense when historically and culturally football has been the sport of the unwashed masses



Showing myself up here because I have no idea who this is 😂
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Either do I. From my experience though, find a Kiwi football fan over 30, and they will talk about him a lot.
 
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