Fifa World Cup: Goalmouth Scramble - All Whites season review and the silver lining to New Zealand’s absence in Qatar

All Whites striker Chris Wood. Photo / Photosport

NZME’s world-renowned football blog Goalmouth Scramble is back. Our rotating stable of football writers will offer daily hot takes on all the action from the World Cup in Qatar. Today, Joel Kulasingham looks back at the All Whites’ season and tries to find some positives about missing out on the World Cup.

OPINION:

Fifa’s wild, thrilling and — to put it lightly — shady World Cup in Qatar fits neatly into the narrative of football as a whole in 2022.

It was a footballing year of cognitive dissonance, from sportswashing and fan protests, to a fantastic women’s Euros tournament and plenty of great football across the board.

For the All Whites, it was an exciting but ultimately disappointing season, culminating in a heartbreaking intercontinental playoff against Costa Rica.

At one point during their World Cup campaign — albeit against Oceania part-timers — it looked promising. In the little we saw of the team, which continues to be the biggest shame about international football in this country, Danny Hay’s men looked energetic, talented and passionate about playing for Aotearoa — if not slightly underdone.

New names came to the fore as leaders in New Zealand’s next journey to the World Cup finals: Joe Bell marshalled the midfield with composure and maturity beyond his age; Libby Cacace emerged as possibly the best player in the country.

The veterans looked good too: Chris Wood was deadly in front of goal like he had been in brief spells in the Premier League; Winston Reid suited up in white for one last exhibition in the underappreciated art of old school, hard-nosed defending.

It wasn’t to be.

Costa Rica’s dogged team were a step too far in a controversial 90 minutes in Doha. As the World Cup continues to showcase in thrilling detail, one-off games at the highest level can often come down to micro moments. The game may not always reward the best team — which New Zealand were in the playoff — but it sure as hell is fun and unpredictable. That is, after all, what makes the World Cup so great — pure unadulterated drama is almost guaranteed when you gather the world’s best to play the beautiful game.

Chris Wood and Winston Reid. Photo / Photosport

But as the seams of Fifa’s football governance starts to unravel, football is becoming increasingly tarnished by society’s ills. It wasn’t always this bad, even before the information era. Modern football’s thirst for money and power, in all its corrupting glory, has a distinct way of turning beautiful into bleak.

The deaths, exploitation and despair before and during the World Cup — despite Fifa’s disgusting deflections — will always leave a dark stain on this tournament. New Zealand have at least managed to keep its hands relatively clean.

But perhaps the biggest silver lining to the All Whites’ absence in Qatar is that they were potentially spared from showcasing their flaws as a team at the world stage.

The array of upsets in Qatar so far have — for the most part — come from teams that play with a defensive organisation the All Whites aren’t quite capable of, at least not yet. Reid, for all his experience and determination, wasn’t as match fit as he used to be and sometimes lacked guile on the ball. There were question marks over New Zealand’s best right wingback, goalkeeper and centre back combination. The young side, missing a few key names to injury, also never proved that they could consistently produce enough goal scoring chances against stronger teams — something that hurt them against Costa Rica and the subsequent friendlies against Australia.

In the parallel universe where the All Whites were in Costa Rica’s place, they would’ve landed in the so-called group of death against Germany, Spain and Japan — a potentially humiliating prospect. While it isn’t beyond their ability to string together a couple of strong performances — like fellow minnows Australia, Canada and even Costa Rica after their demolition at the hands of Spain — the All Whites could’ve also easily fallen prey to multiple demoralising losses at the hands of the footballing establishment.

Maybe missing out on this dirty, indefensible tournament wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Maybe not being in Qatar also serves as a wake up call that the All Whites will always find it difficult without sufficient experience and game time at international level.

Ahead of their next campaign, with a much easier road to the finals, the All Whites will be entering into a new coaching era — one that will hopefully come with more consistent fixtures — with the ability to grow into a team that could cause a few upsets of their own.

It still sucks that we couldn’t see them try. But if there ever was a World Cup to miss, at least it’s this one. Bring on 2026.