When Francis de Vries turned up for one of his first trials in Europe, he ended up running around an Ikea carpark.
The temperature was hovering below zero, it was dark and the team’s manager had driven off down the road, telling the squad to run to his car and back four times. De Vries had made a seven-hour journey on local buses to get there – lugging his suitcases up to the north of Denmark, after taking the ferry across from Sweden and paying for his own accommodation in a small Airbnb room.
Then playing semi-professional football, he was looking for another opportunity and couldn’t help but laugh at the situation.
“The goalkeeper coach had picked me up and dropped me off at the Ikea,” de Vries tells the Herald. “I got to meet the rest of the team and there were, luckily, another couple of boys on trial who spoke English, so that was all good but I can’t imagine what these other players were thinking, like, ‘Who’s this guy that’s come from New Zealand to run around an Ikea carpark with us’.”
“The coach drove 800 metres down the road, sat in his car and said, ‘Okay, you’ve got two and a half minutes to get to me and you’ve got two and a half minutes to get back. You’re going to do that four times.
“I just remember running up and down in the dark. It was January, minus two degrees or something crazy and the sun had set a few hours before. It’s one of those moments where you’re just thinking ‘How on earth did I end up here, doing this?’ You have to take it with some humour ... but it humbles you.”
De Vries wasn’t picked up after the week-long trial, before making the long trip back to Sweden, staying in a 12-bed dormitory room in Copenhagen on the way. However, de Vries soon had another trial opportunity – in Sweden – and got to stay in a hotel this time.
“I was buzzing – that was already an upgrade.”
In the depths of winter – with 30cm of snow on the ground – de Vries made a strong impression and was offered a deal.
“It was a big lesson in being able to shift focus from disappointment to something constructive,” recalls de Vries. “One week you’re considering why you’re doing this, the next week you’ve got a two-year contract. Those are the moments that shape you for sure, though you need to develop at least some of the resilience beforehand.”
As a theme for de Vries’ career, the episode is a perfect illustration. The Auckland FC fullback – who has emerged as one of the most influential players in the A-League this season – has often taken the longer road and the harder path. He’s been cut from teams and worked all kinds of jobs, including arduous manual labour and suffered severe injuries, making the recent success – and his subsequent comeback to the All Whites – so much sweeter.
“I had quite a bit of experience of the highs and the lows and everything in between,” admits de Vries. “But it’s all just character-building in the end, isn’t it?”
Nothing has come easy. Growing up, de Vries often missed out on junior representative teams in Christchurch, which drove him to spend extra hours training in local parks, either with friends or alone, working for hours on his now-vaunted crossing technique. He persevered, with time at Canterbury United before getting a scholarship to St Francis College in the United States and being picked up by the Vancouver Whitecaps upon graduation. But he struggled with the transition from college football to the professional game.
“It didn’t go great,” says de Vries, who was also affected by a knee injury. “I played a season, didn’t play that well and ended up not getting my contract renewed.”
With no other offers, he returned to New Zealand, with the silver lining of turning out for the Canterbury Dragons, who he had followed as a kid. While he saved for another overseas venture, he worked at various jobs, including a month of 12-hour shifts in a steel factory.
“It was the hardest thing I ever did,” says de Vries, “catching these big beams of steel as they came off the machine. I was wiped when I got home and it gave me so much respect for what people do to make a living.”
Even at IFK Värnamo – which was a career high point – as the provincial team climbed from the third division to the top flight in two seasons, de Vries worked in a local factory, with shifts from 7am-1pm, before 4pm training.
“Sometimes I’d come into training just thinking, ‘You have to dig deep today, already six hours into physical labour’,” says de Vries. “It definitely taught you how to handle feelings of being uncomfortable and narrow down your focus on to what was important.
“But it was pretty cool. A lot of the boys worked there, the bosses were great, they gave us really good support and what a great life experience. Plus I learned the language.”
His progress in Sweden caught the eye of then national coach Danny Hay, with his first All Whites cap in November 2021. Life was good. Especially when Varnamo (population 20,000) had just achieved promotion to the top tier of Swedish football.
“Our coach had played for the Swedish national team and done everything in football, but this was his hometown club and to see someone like him in tears was amazing. It just meant so much for the whole community and there was a massive parade in town, everybody was there.”
If that was a beautiful high, a shattering low came in July 2022, 11 games into the Allsvenskanseason, when he ruptured his ACL in training. De Vries initially thought it wasn’t too serious – “I got whacked and walked off the field, thought it would be okay” – before a scan confirmed his worst fears.
“I had six months left on my contract and it was a nine-month injury,” says de Vries. “So you do the maths and you know what’s going to happen, as it’s not very attractive to sign a player who’s coming off a long-term injury. It was pretty gutting because my career had hit the point where things were starting to really accelerate upwards.”
That led him back to New Zealand – though it wasn’t the only reason, as his Swedish partner Lisa had also wanted to emigrate Downunder to start a new life together there – and amateur football with Eastern Suburbs, while he also started his coaching business. It could have been the end of the journey but for the Auckland FC opportunity, after the foundation of the Black Knights. He was unveiled as one of Auckland’s first players in May 2024 and his words resonate from that press conference to this day.
“[What I’ve been through] has developed a lot of resilience and actually a lot of gratitude to get this opportunity now,” de Vries told the Herald back then. “Not many players get a second chance. It definitely means more to have the chance to play professionally again; I’m going to put everything into it, go hard and do my best.”
De Vries has delivered in spades, forming part of Auckland’s rock-solid defence, while his set pieces and attacking forays down the left have been a key weapon, with a team-high seven assists. He’s had to adjust his game – from the more structured football in Europe – but has adapted superbly. The 30-year-old has become a fan favourite and something of a cult hero, with his endeavour, passion, everyman appeal and his ability to make things happen.
The best could be yet to come, with Saturday’s semifinal first leg in Melbourne the start of another adventure.
“We are so excited about the playoffs,” says de Vries. “The crowds are going to be big and the players have been building up to this for the whole season. I’m ready to go, looking forward to seeing what we’re made of as a team. We want to seize the opportunity, as it presents itself and continue to trust in the things that we’ve done all season.”
Michael Burgess has been a Sports Journalist for the New Zealand Herald since 2005, covering the Olympics, Fifa World Cups, and America’s Cup campaigns. He is a co-host of the Big League podcast.
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