Anything can happen: How the All Whites are preparing for World Cup chaos
Chirs Wood and the All Whites have to be prepared for anything at the Football World Cup.
Photo: www.photosport.nz
Anything can happen in football and being prepared for the unexpected could help the All Whites create history.
The New Zealanders kick off their campaign in Group G on Tuesday, a match years in the making.
The All Whites have two players, and a couple of members of staff, with Football World Cup experience but for the remainder of the squad this will be the first time under football’s brightest lights.
Their previous experiences in a national team shirt and with their club sides around the world will be crucial if, or when, things go awry.
Weather delays
Weather alert for game delay.
Photo: www.photosport.nz
The 2026 World Cup will be played in cities where heat, humidity, thunderstorms and poor air quality could be a concern.
With the heat in mind, Fifa has introduced mandatory hydration breaks for all 104 matches across the three co-host countries of United States, Canada and Mexico, regardless of how hot it is.
The breaks, in each half, have been trailed at warm-up games and even though the rules state there is to be no coaching during the stoppage, several teams, including the All Whites, have used the opportunity to talk tactics.
The All Whites first warm-up game in Florida against Haiti was delayed by half an hour due to lightning around the stadium in Fort Lauderdale, so the team has had a practice on what waiting to kick-off will feel like.
With games in the cooler climes of Los Angeles and Vancouver the All Whites’ pre-tournament camp in Florida will have prepared the players in warmer temperatures than they are likely to face in the World Cup.
A man advantage
Match referee Michael Oliver shows Dario Osoria of Chile the red card.
Photo: Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
Four red cards were handed out at the last World Cup in 2022 and the same number in 2018.
Playing with 10 men is one situation that can require a shuffle in a line up and the mental fortitude to beat the odds, but playing against 10 men can be equally as fraught.
The All Whites’ farewell game on home soil in March was won against a 10-man Chile side.
After that game coach Darren Bazeley said “it’s not easy playing against 10 men sometimes that becomes even harder”.
“I can’t remember the last time we played against 10 men, I don’t remember that ever happening, and it’s not something that we would plan for, so I think [the game] was all about attitude and mentality.
“In a performance where the players talked about playing simple, playing quickly, moving the ball, when you play against 10 men and you do that, it becomes really, really nice for you.
“If you try and over-complicate it against 10 men it’s sometimes quite hard.”
Would Bazeley be okay with playing with a man advantage during the World Cup?
“I won’t say I hope that happens, but I probably do.”
Shot-stopper switch
All Whites goalkeepers Alex Paulsen and Max Crocombe.
Photo: www.photosport.nz
Usually in the big games the only time a goalkeeper is changed is for injury or indiscretion.
The All Whites’ most experienced keeper at the World Cup, Max Crocombe, said there is “always a little bit of commotion” when a goalie is called up off the bench during the game.
Crocombe and Alex Paulsen will be the All Whites’ two game day goalkeepers for the World Cup.
Both have started for New Zealand and have also spent time on the bench at club level over the last four years.
During two World Cup warm-up games this month the duo both got a chance between the sticks against Haiti and England but during the tournament proper sharing the keeping duties will have mean something has gone wrong like a red card or bad injury.
“You always have to just be ready,” Crocombe said. “Being mentally prepared helps kind of ignore all the noise and hysteria going on around you, which is normally what’s happening if you’re having to come off the bench as a goalkeeper.”
Australian goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne made a name for himself ahead of the 2022 World Cup when he came off the bench for his third senior appearance for his country to be in goal for a shootout.
Redmayne was nicknamed ‘grey wiggle’ for his dancing to distract the penalty takers in the qualification game. The antics worked and the Socceroos qualified for the World Cup in Qatar.
The first time a goalkeeper was changed during a World Cup, to be stopping penalties, was in 2014 when the Netherlands made the switch with seconds remaining in their quarterfinal against Costa Rica to get Tim Krul in goal with the shootout in mind. Again this was a success.
The All Whites are unlikely to make a change for a shootout but both Crocombe and Paulsen have been involved in shootouts as has New Zealand’s third goalkeeper Michael Woud.
Called off at half-time
Players of both teams (Michael Boxall and Bill Tuiloma) argue during the New Zealand All Whites v Qatar friendly football match in Austria, 2023.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
In one of Bazeley’s games in charge as an interim coach of the All Whites in June 2023 a very rare thing happened.
The New Zealanders refused to take the field for the second half of a friendly game against Qatar after centre-back Michael Boxall was allegedly racially abused by an opposition player late in the first half.
The referee took no action on the field and New Zealand Football believed the All Whites had done the right thing by abandoning the game at half-time.
It was a situation the All Whites had not faced before.
Sixteen of the World Cup squad were there on that day in Austria and will have an unusual experience that disrupted a game to call on in North America.
Injury
All White Ryan Thomas
Photo: Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
A number of squads at the World Cup will have players that are battling niggling injuries and might be on managed minutes, as All White Ryan Thomas is.
With 26-man squads some players are unlikely to take the field during the tournament.
Bazeley predicted seven or eight All Whites would not play in North America.
With that in mind, Bazeley believed the All Whites could cope should the worst happen and a player is injured during the World Cup.
“With a squad of 26 I’d like to think that we can cover losing a couple of players if that happened, hopefully it doesn’t.
“We’ve got so many players that are so flexible positionally that could move into a different position if really needed .”
There was a very brief example late in the warm-up game against England when Bazeley tried back Francis de Vries in the midfield.
Going viral
All White Tim Payne meets Argentinian influencer Valen Scarsini.
Photo: NZ Football
The All Whites, and more specifically Tim Payne, would not have anticipated going viral ahead of the World Cup.
Payne and by extension the New Zealand team were thrown into the spotlight when an Argentinean influencer Valen Scarsini, who identified Payne as the player with the lowest follower count ahead of the World Cup urged his followers to give Payne’s social media account a boost, and make him a World Cup Hero.
It worked and Payne now had 5.6 million followers, after starting with 4700 followers in late last month.
The increased attention also caught the New Zealand Football media team off guard when international requests for interviews with Payne and the team rose quickly.
But for the most part Payne has been sheltered from the requests and aside from some ribbing from his teammates he is said to have been abel to put the potential off-field distraction behind him.
New Zealand teams do have some experience with making headlines before a significant event, as the Football Ferns did ahead of the 2024 Olympics when the team was filmed by drone by one of their opponents Canada.
Mental strength
All Whites coach Darren Bazeley and assistant Simon Elliott.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
All Whites assistant coach Simon Elliott played at the 2010 World Cup and during the March international window said this year’s players would be under pressure in the unique World Cup environment “and if we’re not used to it, then we need to get used to it because it will go up from here”.
“That being said, I think most of the players where they’re playing, they’re pretty used to some kind of scrutiny, some kind of pressure.”
Bazeley said “ultimately mindset and heart” would be the difference for the All Whites.
Leading into the global tournament Bazeley wanted the players to focus on consistency.
“When you go to a World Cup, you have to be able to back it up and have to be able to perform and perform and perform across that whole tournament,” Bazeley said in March when the team had four games to play until the World Cup.
The players are also aware of what is in front of them.
“Something so big as the World Cup doesn’t come around a lot and for most of us, it’s our first World Cup,” Thomas said while in pre-tournament camp in Florida.
“So that’s going to be obviously take a bit of time to get used to, but we’re just taking it in our stride and so far, the boys have been really good and I think it’s just going to carry on like that and hopefully going into that game, we can just enjoy ourselves and seize the moment.”
Marko Stamenic concurred. “I think we’re just embracing it, trying to stay in the present, trying to embrace and enjoy every moment together because we know from past players, from the 1982 and 2010 players, they’ve all told us that it goes by like a click of a finger.”
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