Football: Working class men ready for big job

Auckland City players take part in a training session ahead of the Club World Cup. Photo / Getty

Tonight's opening match of the Fifa Club World Cup is the quintessential clash of the haves and have nots.

While all of the Sanfrecce Hiroshima team are full professionals, with combined salaries in the tens of millions, the majority of their opposition have day jobs to pay the rent and put food on the table.

On any given Thursday in New Zealand, Auckland City fullback Takuya Iwata might rise at 5am, before a long drive to Whangarei, as part of his distribution job for a food company.

On that same day, midfielder Ryan De Vries will deliver up to 10 cars to dealerships around the greater Auckland region for a car importer.

Meanwhile, teammate Darren White could be found hunched over a computer at Dulux Paints, putting in his eight hour shift before evening training.

But this Thursday that trio - and the rest of their teammates - need to go from everymen to supermen, to compete with the J-League champions tonight (11.45pm NZT). For the past week or so Auckland City have lived in a professional bubble, with a full time focus on football. They've stayed in a palatial hotel overlooking Yokohama's impressive waterfront, been ferried to their immaculate training venues on a luxury Fifa coach and had all meals catered for with a wide menu.

It's a tantalizing glimpse of life as a professional footballer - something their opposition tomorrow enjoy all year round.

"It makes a change, said De Vries. "Instead of rushing across Auckland to get to training in the evening, here we are focused on football all day. Usually we have our jobs, but this becomes our job."

De Vries works for a Auckland car importer, delivering Japanese cars to dealers across the city. It's not ideal for an aspiring footballer, but it pays the bills.

"Everybody wants to be a professional footballer but it is not easy to make it from New Zealand," said De Vries. "All we can do is keep performing to the best of our ability."

Iwata works in sales for Tokyo Food, delivering goods to restaurants and takeaway outlets across Auckland and sometimes as far as Whangarei.

"Sometimes I am very tired," said Iwata. "Because even though we are not professional we train a lot."

I work from 7am to 4pm and if I'm going to Whangarei I leave the house at 5am, come back in the afternoon with traffic jams then straight to training. It's very tough."

The Japanese-born Iwata has special motivation on Thursday, with around 500 family and friends coming to watch the match.

"We will have our own supporters club in the stadium," said the 32-year-old. "It will be good for us."

White, who had a strong impact off the bench at the 2014 Club World Cup and scored in both of Auckland's successful penalty shoot outs, works a 40 hour week for Dulux Paints.

"My company is football friendly so to speak - they are always asking me how football is going," said White. "But I know that work has got to come first. I get to work early, do my eight hours and then get away."

Like almost of his teammates, Whites exhausts all of his holiday time on footballing pursuits.

"I don't have any annual leave left, said White. "I owe them days that is why I will be working through this Christmas."

And can Auckland City make history again, after their special heroics in Morocco last year?

"Anything is possible with some hard work and determination," said De Vries. "If you stick together, you can go places."