You don't think the current squad can grow as they mature? We surely have more players in top profesional leagues than the previous all whites:
2x PL players
1x Championship Player
1x Eredivisie Player
1x Ligue 1 player
1x Bundesliga 2 player
Thats half the starting 11 playing in some of the top leagues in europe - although "playing" is a bit of a stretch for Tuiloma, Wood, and Rojas.
Add to that the likes of McGlinchey and Barbarouses who are in the top tier of players in the A-League and we are surely on paper the best all whites squad.
I think that's a pretty generous assessment given where some of those players actually are (and the 2010 squad was, in my view, the best ever All Whites squad, and it could be years before we have it that good again).
But all that is really beside the point - because ultimately, being the best AWS squad isn't really that far from being the tallest dwarf in the world. It's an interesting debate for fans, but doesn't really address the biggie, which is the squad's overall competetiveness at the international level. And it's not really there right now, nor has it been there historically, at least consistently (2010 notwithstanding, and I'm sure that in all honesty, most fans will admit that we did overachieve there).
I guess I've been beating this drum since I watched a lot of EURO qualifiers over the weekend - and I'm talking here sides like Austria, Sweden, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Iceland - sides which I guess most people on this forum would think we could compete against, and I compare that with what happened last night, and yeah. We don't even belong in the same sentence there.
100% agree with this post, although I think the bit in bold a really a straw man argument. I don't think anyone actually thinks that this team would compete against those sides who are top half European nations with huge football histories.
The question really is how would we do against European "minnows" that are proper countries - I'm thinking Estonia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Georgia, Malta, Bulgaria, Albania
It's hard to say it, but it's not that unlikely that we never qualify for another World Cup in our lifetime under the current format.
Of course there was a time early in Ricki's reign when we were playing those kinds of European "minnows" and we did well, beating Georgia 3-1 in Germany in our first ever win on European soil against a European national side. You can see the evolution towards the 2010 squad with six of the fourteen who played still around in 2010:
May 27 2006, Altenkirchen (Germany), Stadion Altenkirchen,
Georgia 1-3 New Zealand
(Shota Arveladze 41' - Vaughan Coveny 35', 53', Chris Killen 37')
Georgia:
George Lomaia, Kakha Kaladze [c], Shota Arveladze, [8 missing].
Coach: n/a
New Zealand:
Glen Moss, Noah Hickey, Danny Hay [c], Steven Old, Kris Bouckenooghe, Ivan Vicelich,
David Mulligan (Adrian Webster 75'), Jeremy Christie, Leo Bertos, Chris Killen
(Raf de Gregorio 90'), Vaughan Coveny (Jarrod Smith 62').
Coach: Richard Herbert.
This was preceded by a creditable 2-0 loss in Budapest to Hungary and followed by 1-1 draw with Estonia in Tallinn with only three of the starters still in the squad in 2010.
It's interesting to speculate which sides were stronger, Ricki's early selections or Anthony Hudson's recent ones? Of the side that beat Georgia, only Hay, Vicelich, Bouckenooghe and Killen had played at a decent level. But there was perhaps more experience there than the current squad with guys like Mulligan playing in the lower leagues in England for some years, Hickey in Finland and Coveny in the Aussie NSL.
Of the players who took the field vs. Georgia, eight never made the 2009 - 2010 World Cup squad due to retirement, injury or being found inadequate. Most of the defence fell by the wayside to be replaced by better options like Nelsen, Smith, Reid and Sigmund (who was better than Old, though not Hay).
Of the players who took the field vs. China and Thailand over the last week, you would expect most to be around for the next World Cup / Oceania Nations Cup qualifiers and few to retire.
This is the website with every All Whites result over the years and line-ups for most games - here's the page for Ricki's early matches:
http://www.rsssf.com/tablesn/nz-intres-det00.html#...
It's fascinating to look with hindsight at some of the lineups we faced such as vs. Chile in two friendlies in April 2006 in Chile (4-1 and 1-0 losses):
"Alexis Sánchez made his international debut for the Chile national team against New Zealand on 27 April 2006."
