2019 was a big year for kiwi football. There was the Women’s World Cup for the Ferns with a full build up tour that included a win over England and a quad-series in Australia. There was a Men’s U20 side that made the knockouts at their World Cup. Men’s U23 Olympic qualifiers as well as a Pacific Cup and some friendlies against Aussie. The Men’s U17 World Cup happened. The Women qualified for the next U20 World Cup with ease. Hell, even the All Whites played a couple games!

One of the more remarkable years for kiwi international footy, to be honest. There was a national team doing something interesting basically every month, many of them youth teams as the next generation of Aotearoa football prepares to take us into an era of unprecedented strength and depth. Even the All Whites got onto that buzz with Danny Hay now in charge, handing out seven debuts in two games and recalibrating the team to be built around the likes of Sarpreet Singh, Joe Bell, and Ryan Thomas as well as the veteran icons of Winston Reid and Chris Wood.

Which is cool because after a ridiculous 16 months between international fixtures and basically two full years between games with full strength squad prior to those friendlies against Ireland and Lithuania... 2020 shapes to be a pretty big year for the All Whites. It’s even been announced recently that New Zealand will be hosting the 2020 OFC Nations Cup, the first time we’ve hosted that bad boy since 2002 when Australia were still in the confederation. Ryan Nelsen scored the only goal to beat the Aussies in the final back then (although there have been different formats involving home and away games in subsequent tournaments).

Bit of a conundrum here though... the Nations Cup is not World Cup qualifying. That whole thing is yet to be confirmed by Oceania Football but should begin towards the end of the year, September or something like that. Last time the Nations Cup was used as a sort of preliminary round for the qualifiers, with the top six finishers advancing to a further group stage with three teams in each, home and away games played therein and the top finisher in each group advancing to the two-legged final. The winner of that going on to the inter-confederational playoff. But no details of anything like that as of yet.

The Nations Cup also used to offer a ticket to the Confederations Cup but FIFA have scrapped that one in preference for an expanded Club World Cup. So the Nations Cup is just the Nations Cup now. However it does happen about a month out from the Olympics so chances are we see an All Whites team that trends closer towards that U23 squad than a proper senior team. There’ll still be some older fellas out there, most likely, and these will still be full international caps so can’t completely take the piss here. But with a lot of those U23 guys there or thereabouts in the All Whites set up anyway and with that Olympic tournament way more important to NZF and beyond it only makes sense to utilise this tournament in that way. It’s at home too, so conditions will be decent enough and we’ll be favourites regardless (especially with some of the quality in that U23 side – the Olympics are likely to feature names such as Singh, Bell, McCowatt, Woud, Pijnaker, etc.). The main question there is how the coaching thing works, since this should technically fall under Danny Hay’s jurisdiction but Des Buckingham is the U23s boss and isn’t on Hay’s coaching staff. Presumably they’ll work together, dunno.

The All Whites will also have those World Cup qualifiers at some point this year, plus they’re very confident of getting action in the March international window – Europe was the initial idea though the Middle East seems to have its advantages as a middle ground between the European and Australasian based players. Also if you google it, google seems to think we’re playing Vietnam on March 27 at Yarrow Stadium in New Plymouth which... okay. If you say so, google.

Still, lots of All Whites games coming up this year... although those Olympics are going to be the big one. The U23s are going to look a lot like last year’s U20s, with a few blokes sprinkled in from the previous U20 cycle and a couple elder statesmen for the cherry on top. But the bulk from that brilliant U20 side and considering how they were eliminated in that World Cup, the controversial penalty shootout against Colombia, it stands to reason that there’ll be a lot of unfinished business for Coach Buck and the lads. It’s fortuitous timing but what an opportunity.

We won’t find out their draw until later but this’ll be their third Olympic tournament, having drawn once and lost twice at both the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 events. Last time we were disqualified because of the ineligibility saga. Japan are there as hosts and they’re joined by France, Germany, Romania, Spain, Egypt, Ivory Coast, and South Africa with the Asian tournament going on at the moment (3 teams), the South American one beginning this weekend (2 teams), and the North/Central American one taking place in March (2 teams). 16 teams all up, four groups of four leading to quarterfinals. New Zealand won’t be expected to win any of these games but youth internationals are funny, the reputation of senior sides doesn’t always hold up at age levels and this New Zealand side has excellent continuity. It’s stacked with prospects and most have got a chip on their shoulder after that U20 WC... a youth World Cup in which they proved they didn’t need to alter their gameplan for anybody. Erling Haaland just signed for Borussia Dortmund having scored a billion goals this season... but he couldn’t score past Nando Pijnaker, George Stanger, and Michael Woud that day.

Speaking of unfinished business, the Football Ferns have even more of that than the U23s do after their World Cup campaign last year failed to live up to expectations. They didn’t make the knockouts, they didn’t win a game, they didn’t even score a goal until ten minutes from time in their third game and it was an own goal. Really disappointing considering what they were capable of but it’s hard to deny that the lingering effects of the Andreas Heraf scandal caught up with them in the end (hey wasn’t Sky Sport gonna do a doco about all that? I remember seeing promos for it... did it happen and I missed it? Did they can it in favour of more rugby and netball?). Not so much on an emotional level, more so on a practical level because Tom Sermanni basically had to squeeze in an entire World Cup cycle into one year and that wasn’t really gonna happen for a team without a history of achieving at that level.

The structure of the team was pretty great. They battled hard and if they’d only lasted a few more minutes than they would have snuck a 0-0 draw against eventual beaten finalists Netherlands in the opener and who knows what might have then happened in that alternate timeline. But the biggest working point is clearly a lack of creativity going forwards, a common issue for New Zealand at most international tournaments. They were a little better in that area in November friendlies against China and Canada (less so against Canada, tbf) but poor finishing proved another hurdle as they were held scoreless in each of those. One goal scored in their last six matches. All defeats. Hmm.

They’ll get plenty of chances to solve that creativity problem leading into the Olympics. In early March they take part in the 2020 Algarve Cup in Portugal where they’ll play three games in a knockout/placement format. Belgium are up first and depending on if they win or lose they’ll face the winner or loser of Portugal vs Italy, with another game to follow against either Germany, Sweden, Denmark, or Norway. Three games in 7 days, all against strong European opposition. You’d imagine there’ll be some solid friendlies leading into the Olympics as well so plenty of footy for the Ferns, who very quickly pushed the goalposts back to this Olympic tournament after missing their targets at the World Cup. A more reasonable time-frame for success under Tom Sermanni (although also trickier in opposition with fewer teams involved).

Therefore the Olympics will arrive at a convenient time for the Ferns, same as for the U20s. After this tournament there’s three years until the next World Cup so it could be the end of an era, maybe the last chance to do something special for a few of the older players who’ve hung around this long. There aren’t very many on the brink of retirement but you only get so many chances and it won’t be long before the players that took the last U17s all the way to third place at the World Cup in 2018 are beginning to knock on the door for full international selection (a couple already are). Plenty of that team will be in the U20s that go to the World Cup in August, while there’s also an U17 Women’s World Cup in November with qualifying for that meant to happen imminently after it was postponed late last year. The next waves are well on the way.

The Women’s Olympic tournament only has 12 teams and it’s a full senior competition. Three groups of four also leading into quarterfinals so the top two teams go through as well as two of the three top third-place finishers... a position that the Ferns managed in 2012 thanks to a 3-1 win against Cameroon in their last group game, putting them through on goal difference with three points but the same points total (with a worse goal difference) wasn’t enough in 2016, the Ferns needing to have gotten a draw in one of their other games to progress.

The draw will happen in April and will be based on FIFA rankings... which still surprisingly have the Ferns at 23rd in the world despite having lost their last six games (prior to that they did get impressive wins over Norway and England, to be fair). Japan of course are there as hosts. Brazil, Great Britain, Netherlands, and Sweden have all qualified. Six more teams are yet to secure their spots from CONCACAF, AFC, CAF, and a CAF/CONMEBOL playoff.

You can’t have more than one team from the same confederation in a group which means we’re guaranteed to face either GB/NED/SWE (England qualified on their own but they compete as Great Britain in Olympics so will probably chuck a couple Scottish/Welsh players in there to mix it up... it’ll be mostly England though). Also Japan are top seeded which means that supposing USA qualify as expected then there’ll be two World Cup semi-finalists as second seeds. The Ferns, in all likelihood, will be a fourth seed.

It’s gonna be tough... and to get out of the group the ladies might need to take points off a top tier team in a top tier context which is something they’ve never really done before. Nothing comes easy. But that’s the way you want it, success tastes sweeter when it’s hard earned. And while the All Whites and their year will be spread out across the whole twelve months and across the senior and U23s team, the Football Ferns are already in hyperdrive as they speed towards the Olympics. After that one Tom Sermanni’s contract will end and there’ll be repercussions one way or the other based on how they go in Tokyo. Women’s youth World Cups will then take over the focus in the shadow of those Olympics but for the next six months it’ll be the Football Ferns in the spotlight as they seek to do what they failed to do at the World Cup.

So, yeah, get ready for a pretty busy 2020.