The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Are you coming to Brazil, bro? Assessing the All Whites' World Cup hopes

New Zealand players celebrate after New Zealand's Shane Smeltz, partially visible at second from left, scored a goal, during the World Cup Group F soccer match between Italy and New Zealand at Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit, South Africa, Sunday, June 20, 2010. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Roar Guru
22nd July, 2013
14

Australia’s ‘routine and inevitable’ qualification for the 2014 World Cup finals has upset some of the Kiwis, who are casting long and languorous looks towards Bondi’s golden beaches. The All Whites are turning green.

Some noted Kiwi sports journalists are even lamenting that Asia has been allocated too many automatic FIFA World Cup finals places.

Adding that Oceania should be given its own automatic FIFA World Cup Qualification spot, instead of a miserly half or even quarter ticket.

In terms of member nations and population, Asia is the strongest of FIFA’s football confederations and gets four automatic places at FIFA World Cup Finals tournaments.

Astute businessman and Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy appreciated the value of safety in numbers and did all he could on the FIFA political stage to get Australia into the Asian Football Confederation.

That decision is now paying off handsomely for the FFA.

Previously, in many FIFA delegates eyes, failure was seen as inevitable for relatively small Oceania football nations like Australia and New Zealand.

Their lowly place in world football’s pecking order needed to be maintained, until of course we became part of Asia.

Advertisement

However, Asia is also quite arguably, one of the weakest FIFA football confederations in terms of results on the international football field.

All things being equal, the World Cup finals should be for the host nation as automatic qualifiers, and the top 31 football nations in the world to make up the 32 contestants.

Japan is ranked 32 in the world, South Korea 40 and Australia 47, yet they now seem to have a ‘stranglehold on World Cup tickets’.

Those football nations ranked higher than us who continually fail to qualify, are also not amused.

Like it did to Australia, I’m sure FIFA has assured the New Zealand Football Association that it will do everything in its powers to rectify the injustice.

If necessary, they’ll have to form FIFA committees and send them on ‘fact finding missions’ and ‘facilities evaluations’ across Oceania to get to the bottom of it, or more likely the bottom of the brown paper bag stuffed with Swiss Francs.

Australians know how FIFA delegates are capable of not honouring their promises or not volunteering the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Advertisement

The Kiwis also argue that the Socceroos of 2013 can’t hold a candle to the teams that played in the 2006 or even the 2010 World Cup finals, yet they are on their way to an historic third-straight World Cup Finals appearance and in fabulous Brazil of all places.

The All Whites (ranked 57th) qualified for the 2010 World Cup finals after winning the Oceania qualifying group and beating Asia’s fifth-ranked nation, Bahrain, 1-0, in a home and away inter-continental playoff.

They also achieved the international distinction at South Africa 2010 of not losing a single game at that tournament and yet still not progressing past the first round.

In the past, the Oceania champions have faced off against strong and proud football nations from the South American confederation (CONMEBOL) like World Cup winners Argentina and Uruguay, North American champions and even Scotland at one time.

Pairing the Oceania champions against the fifth-best Asian country seems a fairer fight.

Why not even combine the Asian Confederation with Oceania into an Asia Pacific Football Confederation with five automatic World Cup Qualification spots and give the New Zealanders and American Samoans the same odds as us?

FIFA conducted a ‘fair and random’ draw, and the owner of the ‘lucky’ marble selected to play New Zealand belonged to CONCACAF (comprising North America, Central America and the Caribbean).

Advertisement

Currently New Zealand’s opponents from CONCACAF for one of the remaining Brazil 2014 World Cup places looks like being either Honduras or Panama.

That game looks well within the All Whites reach, especially over two legs home and away on the 13th and 20th November 2013, so maybe our cross-Tasman neighbours shouldn’t be complaining so much, eh?

The fifth-placed AFC nation (Jordan or Uzbekistan) has a bigger mountain to climb.

They have to play the fifth placed CONMEBOL team for one of the last remaining places at the Brazil 2014 supper table.

That means Uruguay, Chile or Venezuela, who are all ranked above Australia, so thank goodness we are already safely qualified from the AFC.

I’ve always learnt from bitter experience never to underestimate a New Zealand sporting team.

Best of luck to the All Whites and let’s hope it’s a box of budgies, and the Land of the Long White Cloud gets another football World Cup silver lining and stops complaining about the Aussies going to Brazil.

Advertisement
close