U20 World Cup - Why aren't YOU going

No Australia.

End Of!

Swapping Myanmar out for Australia and beating the convicts 5-1 is possibly the only thing that could make this tournament better.

I was a bit disappointed with the croud at last night's Wellington games. Especially the second, I was expecting a bit more of a block of USA fans. I've come across quite a few Americans in Wellington and I thought that even if they don't like football they would take the opportunity to get all U-S-A, U-S-A on it. 

I understand people not showing up to the first game because of the kickoff during work time and the longer break between games with no ability to leave and come back, but I thought there might have been a few more for the 7:30 game, especially as both teams has looked good in pool play. Oh well, their loss, it was great fun with the Colombian fans. Shame they're gone now

There were quite a few US fans but they were seperated and deathly quiet until they went up 1-0 and they all suddenly piped up.

Personally I thought the US as a team were very well organised but pretty dull to watch.

Thought croud was good size all things considered.  Again the colour and atmosphere of passionate supporters was great..didnt know there were so many Columbians in Welly. 

I haven't been going. Just haven't been interested enough to be honest.

Been watching a bit on the tele though - the All Whites games in full as well as the highlights of other games.

Personally I wish there were more 'big name' teams involved e.g. Spain, Netherlands, Italy, England, plus a few of the more popular asian sides would've helped e.g. S.Korea, Japan.

I know that's down to all of them being crap and not qualifying, but this world cup has been one of those where the well-known footballing nations seem few and far between. 

Eurosport pisted this article bashing the small crouds. Thougt croud figures were pretty good but after seeing some of those figures....
http://www.eurosport.com/football/serbia-mali-through-at-u-20-world-cup-in-front-of-small-crouds_sto4777017/story.shtml

OK lets slag FIFA for their advertising! What about the fact the DomPost has basically ignored this tournament - everyone seems to be happy with the explanation that as the NZ Herald is a sponsor what can we expect?

10,429 at Waikato Stadium for NZ v Portugal (acc. to Fifa website).

My understanding was that NZF and the LOC and the federations agreed to cancel local football/futsal in a host city on match days throughout the tournament. Is the Capital Footy website wrong or is this strategy no longer in place, or is the Hutt not considered part of Wellington?

I was hoping the tournament would get a 10k average which would correspond to 520,000 tickets sold. We are going to fall a little bit short of that. It's a bit disappointing and probably kills any chance we would have had of getting a Woman's World Cup.

why is croud being changed to croud?

Too easy.

There is an auto spell change after the Phoenix misspelt the word at the Hutt Rec games.

It's for the laughs.

there is no excuse

Get your fudgeing arse to the game

Full stop

I've been to every game in my city so far and will go to the last 2.

Good to see some live quality football and I want to support my sport. Been disappointed in the crouds to the games and some I spoke to at the last game only attended cause they got free tickets. I'm happy to pay the full price to fill seats. We don't often get to see this in NZ so it's vital we fill the stadiums for future tournament opportunities.

There appears to still be quite a bit of apathy around football.  Some people's attitude is quite shark to be honest.  Farking wish people would get excited by this, it's on our doorstep we should be making the most of it.  Very hard convincing general sports fan let alone non sporting observers. 

Why so surprised? When our one pro team struggles to get 10,000 per game from the whole NZ pop.? When ASB Prem matches struggle to get 500? When local top league competition struggles to get 50? When our winter weather is crap?

Fact is most people outside football don't give a toss. This is an age-group international comp. after all, just a bunch of aspirational kids here on a freebie - even if we who know our footie better choose to think otherwise.

Fact also is we should be better at the game than we are. [Iceland (pop 323,000) 2, Czech Rep (pop 10 mill plus) 1 yesterday's Euro qual result]. If we were more people would get interested and would watch. IMO we've been using eggball and isolation for far too long as the excuse for age group international under-achievement.

End of rant.

Yeah I can't say I'm surprised or bothered. While it's great for the JAWs to get plenty of support more fans at the other games just means more money to FIFA and longer queues. If people don't care and have other things they would rather spend time and money on then fair enough. Having said that, a sold out final might mean some decent atmosphere.

The tournament has definitely suffered from a lack of star power. I'm sure some of the kids playing are going to go on to great things but we just don't know who they are yet. The only players I knew before the tournament were the kiwis and Pereira from Brazil.

expecting 10,000 people to attend a game every few days is a bit hopeful. Most people would choose a game or maybe 2 to go to (all whites usually). 

Nah nah nah

Never look a gift horse in the mouth

Croud numbers are vital if we ever wish Football to be taken seriously in Aoetearoa.

But you aren't going to get good croud numbers if most people don't take football seriously.

C'mon, who is coming along to Senegal v Uzbekistan?

Ideally it wouldn't be the same 10,000.

ground looked quite full on TV to me. 

Me. Just got my ticket yesterday afternoon and PAX was 10,227.

.

As a counterexample, what about Canada? They have a much bigger population than us, and football is the most participated-in sport there. They also get the chance to play regular games against the likes of USA, Mexico, and most of the Caribbean and Central American teams who are way better than the OFC nations. They also have 3 MLS teams and 2 NASL teams who are all professional (well MLS definitely, NASL might be semi-pro?) whereas we only have 1 pro team. Canada's world ranking? 109. Canada has only been to one World Cup, we've been to two.

We do not underachieve in international age group football. We could maybe do better, but that would overachieving given our environment. Considering also that in this age-group World Cup we drew with Ukraine (45 million people, fully professional league with top teams playing in Champion's League regularly); beat Myanmar (poor as shark and a lot of other issues but still a football mad country with 53 million people), and almost took Portugal to extra time (only 10 million people but that's still more than twice as many as us. Plus they are also football mad and have a fully pro league with the top teams also playing regularly in the Champions League). Argentina and Mexico both went out at the group stage so we did better than them too. I just don't see how we are underachieving. 

Personally I think we are getting better and we could potentially be a team which is capable of holding its own in major tournaments, but I wouldn't say we have underachieved by not being at that level now.

You are right when I read this I hadn't seen the posts from you and others, but I followed your tip and am better informed now thanks

If world football ability was based on population we should be up there with Uruguay who have won the world cup twice and have a population about the size of NZ. The massively populated Faroe Islands beat Greece for the second time yesterday! basically geographic location unfortunately plays a big part in where we are as a football nation. Australia did NZ a massive favour by joining Asia, which has given us pretty automatic access to age grade and women's world cups. What we really need is proper games against proper teams, even Oceania ones - (when was the last time we played Fiji in a friendly series?)

Usual grumpy article in today's Dom Post - apparently the games have been sharke. Most I've seen were pretty good I thought.

Yeah, fair enough. I'm just pissed off we were eliminated by an 88th min goal.

So basically this then:

http://www.rankingper.com/ (as at Jan 2015)

One issue is you have to buy into the Fifa rankings rather than something like the ELO ratings.

Anyway, based on the above, NZ is 'better' per capita than Australia, Argentina, Spain, Germany and England!

Ridiculous really.

I'm willing to bet they wrote that after seeing a couple of 0-0 or 1-0 score lines yesterday. Doubt they've actually been watching the games - that'd be far too much research. 

The tournament has been full of excitement and drama.