All Whites vs Samoa | Mon 18th Nov | 7:30pm | Go Media Stadium, Penrose

12 professional clubs in the Swiss Super League, all with fully functioning Academies. Presumably the 10 clubs in their 2nd tier (Challenge League), also all fully professional. So around at least 22 professional clubs.

Football the dominant team sport in the country, with yeah plenty of money floating around. Easy for their best talent to get scouted into top 5 tier leagues, elsewhere in Europe. Situation there of little relevance to NZ. 


We are more a small version of Canada. Rugby and ice hockey the dominant historical codes, getting the main sponsorship and media attention. A long way from football's European epicentre, and not always easy for young players to get a gig on the Continent without a friendly passport. Our top clubs play in another country's comp (MLS & ALM), but football is growing in popularity and has a high participation rate with kids. Pathways and national team expectations yes improving.

Or if you keep the Swiss angle, we are a bigger version of Liechtenstein, ie Vaduz FC playing in the Swiss leagues.

theprof

Elemenop

theprof

They also have a massive population advantage on us too.

Just means we need better pathways.. we are actually getting there. Teams like Switzerland are top 20 and not that much bigger than us from a population point of view.

By pathways do you mean money? Switzerland may have a similar population but they have a tonne more money to splash around for sporting developments.

 
And like Australia seemingly plenty of football talent coming in as refugees or economic enforced migrants.

Yes the Kosovo talent train has been a handy one for them.
Google - Around 250,000 people of Kosovar origin live in Switzerland, making them one of the largest groups of foreign residents in the country. This is a significant number, considering that Kosovo has only 1.8 million inhabitants.

coochiee

Yes the Kosovo talent train has been a handy one for them.
Google - Around 250,000 people of Kosovar origin live in Switzerland, making them one of the largest groups of foreign residents in the country. This is a significant number, considering that Kosovo has only 1.8 million inhabitants.

We've got the wrong gene pool

I was very impressed that Vanuatu really did play when they got the ball off us. Samoa really didn't link much together at all. Certainly made it hard for the AWs to penetrate though.

Last outings we gave them a scare on their patch then played the most passive and unenthusiastic match I’ve ever seen from our national side.

Aussie still are winners. You don’t qualify for the WC on paper- if so they probably never would nowadays 

Ninja

LT01

Ninja

I genuinely think we are a stronger team than Australia now. I know it's 'only' Samoa we faced, but we have some serious talent.

Yeah this is going overboard

I would employ you to watch their recent Asian Qualifier matches, and also do an 'on paper' player-by-player comparison. Would say we are ahead of Australia right now.

Elemenop

theprof

They also have a massive population advantage on us too.

Just means we need better pathways.. we are actually getting there. Teams like Switzerland are top 20 and not that much bigger than us from a population point of view.

True but the Swiss are smack bang in the middle of one of football's hot beds. They do not compete against other football codes for numbers and have a very good pro league that is probably better then the A League.

I wonder if we had Nuno for a game against Aussie with a few preparation games how we’d go. 

Both teams have had problems scoring against deep lying defenses. 

Getting the ball to Wood properly and also using him to create space for Garbett, Just, de Jong and others to get shots away would need to happen.

Any game is a one off event and we do have some starting player advantages. Aussie have more good A league players, but they don’t have a striker who has scored 20 PL goals in the last calendar year. 

The other would be if were able to use Paulsen as a proper sweeper and play out from the back effectively. Tough to do, but he could then give us over loads further up the field. 

I think those are two, probably, the two only areas we can surpass the Aussie team and beat them. 
Otherwise they have a lot of depth, but not an obvious availability of top league talent. 

But I think we’d need a foreign coach giving our shirkers a bollocking to figure out a formation and then making them stick to it and keep the intensity up.

coochiee

12 professional clubs in the Swiss Super League, all with fully functioning Academies. Presumably the 10 clubs in their 2nd tier (Challenge League), also all fully professional. So around at least 22 professional clubs.

Football the dominant team sport in the country, with yeah plenty of money floating around. Easy for their best talent to get scouted into top 5 tier leagues, elsewhere in Europe. Situation there of little relevance to NZ. 


We are more a small version of Canada. Rugby and ice hockey the dominant historical codes, getting the main sponsorship and media attention. A long way from football's European epicentre, and not always easy for young players to get a gig on the Continent without a friendly passport. Our top clubs play in another country's comp (MLS & ALM), but football is growing in popularity and has a high participation rate with kids. Pathways and national team expectations yes improving.

Or if you keep the Swiss angle, we are a bigger version of Liechtenstein, ie Vaduz FC playing in the Swiss leagues.

Don't mind this argument but Canada did just reach the Copa America semifinals!

Beating a dead horse here, but I think we are currently on par with the Aussie team. 

I would love to see us face off against them pre 2026 WC, assuming we both qualify (it's no guarantee that Australia will qualify the way they've been performing).

Cacace, Wood, Stamenic, Old would all be strong shouts for the starting lineup if they were Australian.

Garbett probably wouldn't start based on club pedigree, etc, but is extremely underrated IMO and has a very high ceiling. Paulsen a similar calibre.

Happy to beat a dead horse on this one. Having watched a fair bit of Australia recently, I would rate our chances against them very highly. This is the first time I would say this in many years of watching Aus and NZ football. 

Again, having watched a lot of AUS/NZ football recently and over the years, and even looking at the current Australian football lineups for the WC qualifiers, there's not many that I would immediately say guarantee a start over our current AW's bunch. 

Jessie Merino

coochiee

Yes the Kosovo talent train has been a handy one for them.
Google - Around 250,000 people of Kosovar origin live in Switzerland, making them one of the largest groups of foreign residents in the country. This is a significant number, considering that Kosovo has only 1.8 million inhabitants.

We've got the wrong gene pool

I dunno. It’s like the story Greg McGee told about playing rugby with a forestry gang and that’s what hardened him up enough physically to become an AB. I bet at that time no one was scouting that forestry gang for rugby talent. 

The more chances to get and keep people on a football field the greater chances there are of finding talent. 

For example we don’t have a lot of Dutch immigrants, but I reckon they’ve over contributed in terms of football. 

How many of our Nobilo’s did we get away from golf or wine and into football? 
Probably a few Tarara Maori families in football. Maybe the next Rawiri Modric is waiting there…

Ninja

Again, having watched a lot of AUS/NZ football recently and over the years, and even looking at the current Australian football lineups for the WC qualifiers, there's not many that I would immediately say guarantee a start over our current AW's bunch. 

Sorry but you'll wrong. And our 3 scoreless efforts against them in recent years, our very different results against the same opponent (Mexico), and the FIFA rankings all back that up.

Wood & Libby make a starting ANZAC 11. 
Stamenic, and maybe Old, Bindon plus Paulsen in a 23 man squad.

They have six RBs better than Payne or Roux. 

The one major disappointment for me last night against Samoa was the continous poor standard of crossing into Wood. Too long, too short. Inexcusable against such a minnow. The Socceroos have players who would have ruthlessly delivered pinpoint to the big man. 

Against the better teams we still look mostly toothless, and struggle to get our top EPL striker much into the game. Oh how he'd love to have just even one of his Forest hombres Anderson, Gibbs-White, Yates, Hudson-Odoi, Elanga as a NZ team mate. 

But until Singh refinds his mojo, the low number of touches for Chris W in a white shirt may sadly continue. The 2nd half of the game in Dublin, and Garbett's lovely goal a year ago gave us a glimmer of hope. Sarpreet pulling the strings. But since then 4 games against non OFC teams for only Waine's very fortunate face plant USA goal.

This AWs squad has exciting potential, but we have inflated opinions of how good they really currently are. Apart from Wood, Bindon & a now injured Old, no one else has yet impressed in Europe this season. We would need a big slice of luck to beat a full strength Socceroos, and sans the Woodsman in a game the odds are less to 10%.

LT01

coochiee

12 professional clubs in the Swiss Super League, all with fully functioning Academies. Presumably the 10 clubs in their 2nd tier (Challenge League), also all fully professional. So around at least 22 professional clubs.

Football the dominant team sport in the country, with yeah plenty of money floating around. Easy for their best talent to get scouted into top 5 tier leagues, elsewhere in Europe. Situation there of little relevance to NZ. 


We are more a small version of Canada. Rugby and ice hockey the dominant historical codes, getting the main sponsorship and media attention. A long way from football's European epicentre, and not always easy for young players to get a gig on the Continent without a friendly passport. Our top clubs play in another country's comp (MLS & ALM), but football is growing in popularity and has a high participation rate with kids. Pathways and national team expectations yes improving.

Or if you keep the Swiss angle, we are a bigger version of Liechtenstein, ie Vaduz FC playing in the Swiss leagues.

Don't mind this argument but Canada did just reach the Copa America semifinals!

Canada are currently a very good team. Increasing national team expectations. A bit lucky with the draw at the Copa America. Had Peru & Chile in their pool - teams going through rebuilds and currently comfortably 2nd last & last in CONMEBOL WC qualifying. Then the Canadians had Venezuela in their QF (won on pens).

But yes the Canucks do have a bit of a golden generation going on. They have 3 clubs in the MLS. Yeah we could do worse than having a look at what they are doing, apart from perfecting drone technology.