Niche Cache.
Here’s another Football Fern making an exciting move ahead of a World Cup year. Suya Haering came up with Auckland United and was a pretty decorated NZ youth international. Shades of a young Ali Riley in how she works up and down the left edge as a defender. A couple years ago she made the switch to Germany where she teamed up with Maya Hahn at Turbine Potsdam and then one year later she swapped to Carl Zeiss Jena. At 21yo, Haering has already spent two full years in the Bundesliga at a time when we’re struggling for NZ internationals in the very top leagues around the world... but there’s a catch.
Haering’s teams were both relegated with wooden spoons. Turbine Potsdam went 0-1-21 with a -68 goal difference in 2024-25. They only scored five goals in 22 games. The following year she moved to the club that finished directly above them and Carl Zeiss Jena went 2-5-19 with a -60 goal difference in a slightly longer season. Better... but still dead last. Haering made 32 appearances across those two seasons with one assist and three yellow cards. Good experience but it’d be nice not to play for the worst team in the division for once. So she’s left Germany and signed with Montpellier in France.
Montpellier is the club where Mary Fowler spent her first two seasons outside the A-League prior to joining Manchester City. She said she hated it so fingers crossed that environment has improved since. You’d imagine it has given how the club is under completely new ownership these days, a move that saw the women’s team split from the men’s club to become an independent entity under the Crux Football banner. Montpellier was the first club acquired by the venture who have since added FC Rosengård in Sweden (long time home of Ali Riley). Oh yeah and who should happen to be the Founder and CEO of Crux Football? That’d be former Football Ferns captain Bex Smith.
That takeover happened after last season had already begun so now’s about when any changes should start to take hold. And there should be a few because Montpellier only avoided relegation by goal difference last season (granted, they’d have been reprieved anyway due to Dijon being kicked out). Haering leaving Germany means that New Zealand’s 18-year streak of having at least one player in the Bundesliga Frauen (a streak that began with Bex Smith) is under serious threat... we’ve already seen similar streaks end in the top divisions of England and USA over the past two years. But it will keep up a presence in France beyond Kate Taylor’s two years at Dijon FCO. All the Dijon players have been signing elsewhere since that club lost its licence. We’re still waiting for word from Kate Taylor, though it sounds like she may be heading to Spain.
