New Zealand – Road to South Africa 2010

August 17, 2009

New Zealand stands on the verge of their greatest footballing achievement as a nation since they last qualified for the World Cup Finals in 1982. All that is preventing the All-Whites from achieving their goal is a two-legged tie against either Bahrain or Saudi Arabia which will take place in October and November this year.

New Zealand’s quest to reach their first World Cup Finals in 28 years was made easier a couple of years ago when their greatest rivals Australia decided to switch to the Asian qualifying zone and FIFA changed the usual play off game for teams from Oceania, from a two-legged against the 5th best team in South America qualifying to a two-legged tie against the 5th best team in Asian qualifying.

These two events make it clear why New Zealand has found it a little easier to reach this stage of qualifying but it would be unfair to say these are the only reasons for the improvement in the New Zealand National Football team. There has been a resurgence of late of Kiwi players plying their trade with the bigger clubs around the world, the most high profile of which are Ryan Nelsen of Blackburn Rovers and Chris Killen of Celtic.

Also a recent friendly just before the Confederations Cup saw New Zealand score three goals past the World Cup holders, Italy, unfortunately they also conceded four, but this is a measure of how far New Zealand have come recently as in September 2007 they were ranked 156 in the world and now lie in 99th place. The qualifying stages so far have been remarkably straightforward as New Zealand has won every game except one and that one defeat was a ‘dead rubber’ game against Fiji.

So what chance has New Zealand against the 5th best team in Asia? On the negative side, in the Confederations Cup they drew with the current Asian champions Iraq, 0-0, who themselves were eliminated from qualifying early on in the competition. Recent form has also been discouraging with friendly defeats coming against Thailand and Tanzania. However, the Confederations Cup will have given a lot of the squad the experience of a big match atmosphere and I feel if they can come back from Asia with anything better than a two goal deficit then they can sneak a victory on home soil, in front of a capacity crowd in Wellington, and it will be All- White on the night for the boys from New Zealand.

Rob Davies

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