An ’embarrassing’ result for England, but All Whites side showed promise for World Cup

All White Tim Payne and England’s Jude Bellingham
Photo: www.photosport.nz

While British press lamented the “embarrassing result”, a former All White says the New Zealand side showed promise in their 1-0 loss to England.

Sunday’s loss to the world number four, in their final of two warm-up matches, was not an unexpected result against a team that had some of the game’s superstars in their squad.

The British press called it a “lacklustre warm-up victory” (The Telegraph), a “glorified training game” (The Guardian) and “effectively a training session for fitness levels more than anything else” (Express.co.uk).

“One-nil against New Zealand is, frankly, quite an embarrassing result,” Jason Burt wrote for The Telgraph.

But speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report on Monday, former All Whites defender Ivan Vicelich said the game was a “very good lead up game to the World Cup” for New Zealand.

“They showed really great character and commitment to put in a strong performance,” he said.

“England is one of our world’s leading teams, so they needed to do that and they really showed some defensive resilience in the game.

“To hold the English team, who are a top team full of top players, to one-nil was promising.”

Coach Darren Bazeley said the game also offered his side a bit of ‘what if’.

“We will look back and wonder could we have created that one moment?” Bazeley said. “A couple of times we got into crossing positions and weren’t quite good enough and [had a] few in the first half that flashed across the box.

“I think it’s given us enough to go against a very, very good team with very good players. We can be compact and we can be difficult to break down, and we’ve got enough good players to keep our possession and get into good areas.

“Then we need players to have that moment.”

The England result was in stark contrast to the warm-up game against Haiti in Fort Lauderdale, where they lost 4-0, and terms like “disappointed” and “unnecessary” were thrown about by the All Whites coach and players post-match.

“The boys felt it was an improvement, they felt they were in the game,” Bazeley said of the England match, played in 33 degrees Celsius in Tampa.

“It was hard work, but it should be. It should be hard work, international football, and when you’re playing against a team ranked four in the world, it’s going to be hard.

Vicelich, who has the second most caps for New Zealand and was an integral part of the 2010 World Cup team said the boys performed strongly.

“They gave it their best. They unfortunately conceded late in the first half which is a difficult time to concede, but they came back out there, defended really well and what we’ve gotta do is we’ve gotta try to concert those half chances in to goals.

“If we do that, we could have a positive result.”

The All Whites now head to the North American west coast, where their group will be based and where results will matter.

“A couple of rest days to get over this window as such, before we hit the Fifa bubble, and every day we’re working, we’re in meetings, there’s conversations going on, there’s training.

“The boys are determined to be the best they can be and show people how good they can be when the World Cup comes around.”

The All Whites face Iran in their Group G match on 16 June at 1pm NZT.

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