Something mental happened prior to this Wellington Phoenix season. Sarpreet Singh’s transfer to Bayern Munich sent shock waves throughout the kiwi footy landscape but nowhere more than within in the confines of Wellington Phoenix HQ (well, maybe Sarpreet himself and his family, to be fair, but apart from that). A very hefty transfer fee combined with the glory of having developed a player capable of catching the eye of one of the biggest football clubs on the planet will do that for ya.

The Nix have had some success in promoting young players from their academy over the previous couple years. Mark Rudan was a fan of the approach (curious that he’s now in charge of one of the two oldest average starting XIs in the league with Western United this season, alongside Perth Glory), Darije Kalezic you’ve gotta say had some success with the matter too and Caretaker Extraordinaire Chris Greenacre for sure made it a priority. But never has the idea of promoting da yoof been so prominent as it has under Ufuk Talay.

Prior to working as an assistant for Sydney FC during their title winning campaign last season, most of Talay’s experience as a coach had come working with young players, from the Aussie Institute of Sport to the Australian U17 and U20 squads. Some clubs would look at that and see a youth coach unprepared for the major leagues. The Wellington Phoenix saw their perfect next gaffer (shout outs to Marky Mark Rudan for playing the middle man). Here was a fella ideally placed to take the club into a glorious future where young players are given a chance, where the academy is a major focus, and where those things don’t come at the expense of success on the park, quite the contrary. And if those young players develop enough to gather further hefty transfer fees then all the merrier. A new age of younger ages had dawned.

Tactically ol’ Uffie’s been magnificent. Every week he seems to bring out a little tweak in the game plan that works in his team’s favour - sometimes it’s a selection and other times it’s a higher press and other times it’s protecting Ulises Davila from doing too much defending and then there’s how he operates with his fullbacks and... mate, we’ll be here all day at this rate. Those are all the marks of a top quality coach. What’s even cooler is that he’s living up to the build ups from the club in preseason and doing it with the kiddos involved; coz it’s one thing for a club to say they’re gonna do this and it’s another thing to see it in action. And it’s an entirely different thing altogether to then see that team sitting, two thirds of the season through, one win out of second place on the ladder with a game in hand. So let us partake in some closer analysis, shall we?

Now, obviously this can only extend so far. Football’s about balance at all times and you need to leverage the young’uns with veteran leaders, particularly imports in a league like this. The Phoenix have got that. Four of the five oldest players in the squad are imports. Steven Taylor was born in 1986 which basically entitles him to free bus fare in a team like this while Gary Hooper slides in from 1988 (he’s just turned 32) and Luke DeVere and David Ball were born in 1989. Then chuck in 1991 babies Stefan Marinovic and Ulises Davila and there you go. That’s your starting strike pairing, your main playmaker, and your defensive anchor centrebacks and goalkeeper. Pretty nice spine to things, all of those players have been excellent and in the case of Marinovic and Taylor they’ve played every single minute in the A-League to date. The Phoenix have used 21 players this season, the fewest of any team. Add in Callan Elliot and Oli Sail who’ve warmed the bench but not taken off their tracksuit tops yet (Sail’s been an unused sub in literally every game) and there’s your first team squad... here’s a visualisation to make it make sense...

Most of those younger dudes are playing a lot less than the fellas at the left end of that scale, to be fair, with the top four players in terms of minutes this season all at least 28 years old. But then comes Liberato Cacace at 19yo who has started 16 out of 18 games and the only starts he’s missed have been through suspension. Libby is where this all starts because what he’s doing is incredible. He was a starter before he’d even finished high school – he had to miss a game last season to sit his NCAA exams. There have been 37 players across the whole league born in the 2000s to take the field in 2019-20 and the only one to have played more minutes than Cacace is Adelaide’s Louis D’Arrigo... but that dude had played four total A-League minutes prior to this season. Cacace has been a locked on starter for a year and a half – leading the Phoenix in minutes played under Mark Rudan as an 18 year old. He’s basically a veteran and he doesn’t even turn 20 until the end of September.

Somewhat surprisingly Cacace has not won a Young Footballer of the Month award in the A-League, which he might be fast running out of time to do because who knows how much longer he’ll hang around in Aotearoa before the big wide world comes calling. But as an indication of what this whole article is getting at both Reno Piscopo and Cameron Devlin have picked up that award (with Devlin also winning the A-League’s Player of the Month award in December and Ulises Davila getting in for November... and Uffie Talay has a Coach of the Month for December too... the only Aussie coach to win one so far). Now, awards mean pretty little. They’re definitely not the most accurate representation out there. But Piscopo and Devlin are both children of 1998, both here on multi-year contracts, both Australians who left decent places elsewhere to join this team because they believed in the vision, and both having quality seasons. Especially Devlin who has ousted 24 year old vice caption Alex Rufer in the starting XI with his dynamic performances in midfield.

Devlin took a couple months to break into the team. He was on the bench unused for the first three weeks, then missed the squad entirely in the fourth game. After which he had four straight appearances as a substitute before Alex Rufer’s injury gave him an opportunity that he hasn’t let slip. Piscopo likewise started on the bench but has been in the walk-on eleven for the last eight games he’s been available for – albeit with a four-game excursion for Aussie Olympic qualifiers in the middle of that. Devlin is also eligible for the Olympics and is pretty desperate to get a crack there, though wasn’t in that qualifying squad.

And then competing with those two for game time is Callum McCowatt, who turns 21 at the end of April. The top scorer in the NZ Premiership last season and a champion with Eastern Suburbs and already a full All Whites international. Unlike Piscopo and Devlin, this was McCowatt’s first professional contract yet he’s still featured in all but one game this season, starting ten and coming off the bench seven times. Literally every game that Piscopo hasn’t started, McCowatt has (and they even started together once while Gary Hooper was working up his fitness). Between Cacace, Piscopo, Devlin, and McCowatt... those are four players all born in 1998 or younger, who have been regular contributors. Piscopo’s 698 minutes (out of a maximum 1620) are the fewest of the quartet.

Who else has four players as playing prominently as that born after 1 Jan 1998? Nobody, that’s who. The Phoenix are alone in trusting as many prospects as that to do as much as they do. Newcastle and Central Coast have three players with 600+ mins from that age range but they’re the two bottom teams on the table. The rest of the league has just 11 more players combined that fit this criteria. Shout out to kiwi youth international Gianni Stensness too. He made his pro debut with the Phoenix last season and has started every game for CCM this season. Only celebrated his 21st birthday last month plus he scored a bit of a ripper on the weekend.

A lot of this comes back to recruitment. Maybe that’s the next article that’s gotta be written because of all the new signings that had to be made, with two thirds of the team new to the Wellington Phoenix, it’s slightly unbelievable how well everybody has settled in. There aren’t too many players in this wider squad who you wouldn’t trust in a must-win game should the fates so decree it. Perhaps you can throw question marks next to Walter Scott and Liam McGing but they’re also both in that same age range as Cacace/Devlin/McCowatt/Piscopo and McGing especially has been a solid dude for the reserves (also both are only on one-year contracts). The fact is that not everybody progresses at the same rate. What Cacace and company are doing is not normal. It’s special.

Those are the core four but how about Ben Waine? How about Sam Sutton? Still both on youth contracts, although Waine’s will become a first team deal next season. These are the two most notable youth teamers in the current system. They’ve each spent a couple years with the Premiership/Reserves team working their way up to this position, Sutton even captains them when he’s around (which is less and less these days) while Waine was their top scorer last season and has four goals in four appearances this one. Now we’re seeing them pushing at the fringes of the first team. Waine is 18 years old as of last June while Sutton is six months younger (almost to the day).

Waine played three times under Mark Rudan including starting one game late on with a rotated squad prior to the playoff. He was already on this path and he picked up pretty much where he left off after Uffie came to town – featuring off the bench in the first six games and 10 times all up so far. He didn’t even miss a matchday squad until the trip to Perth a couple games ago. The combined fitness of Gary Hooper and David Ball have meant those bench spots are more crowded now so he’s gonna have to be the odd man out sometimes... but that’s the way it goes, even a team like this Nix one with an unwritten charter to support the youngsters can’t be handing out games for free. Gotta keep ‘em hungry. But Ben Waine is doing all he can, remember he scored against Melbourne City back in November to claim what had been Libby Cacace’s record of the Phoenix’s Youngest Ever A-League Goal Scorer. He was 18 years and 145 days old.

Sam Sutton may not have played under Mark Rudan but he did sneak onto the bench for Uffie’s FFA Cup game and then as this current season went on he began to force his way into more matchday squads. Sutts would make his debut as a stoppage time sub in December, featuring twice more including a 23 minute cameo against Western Sydney and as an indication of how well he’s progressing he’s been picked in each of the last seven subs benches. Speaking of which, the Nix have had at least five (and as many as eight) players aged 22 or younger in all but one matchday squad under Talay. The one they didn’t was only coz Libby Cacace was suspended. That’s partly the makeup of the squad, partly Uffie’s trust in them... and also largely thanks to an A-League rule change which allows as many as seven subs on the bench as long as three are U23s... safe to say that timing was just about ideal for the Wellington Phoenix there.

The academy link there’s a curious one because obviously guys like Devlin, Piscopo, and McCowatt aren’t coming out of the WeeNix system. Cacace did. So did vice captain Alex Rufer and the currently-injured Louis Fenton (who stunningly is the seventh oldest player in the squad). Backup keeper Oli Sail too. There’s definitely a pipeline there and there has been for a while with players such as Tyler Boyd, Justin Gulley, James Musa, Tom Doyle, Matt Ridenton, Hamish Watson and others all coming through to the first team at various times to various degrees of success. To say nothing of Sarpreet Singh. But just as not every young player that the first team promotes is necessarily gonna come through the academy, not every player that comes out of the academy is gonna play for the first team. That’s a whole different story but the USA college pathway is a common one while several more are filling out the National League and a few went pro overseas. It’s all relative and they’re all still representing the Welly Nix in some shape or form.

Also notable is that the likes of Piscopo, Devlin, McGing, and Scott are all Aussie lads. Not in the Gianni Stensness mould of wanting to represent Aotearoa either but true blue corks-hanging-off-ya-brim fair dinkum Australians. And that’s all good too. They all left other professional clubs because they wanted to be a part of what the Phoenix are up to, their signings are a credit to the club and the performances of Devlin in particular are a vindication of that. Would venture to say that the FFA appreciate it too.

This is New Zealand’s only professional football team. We want to see New Zealanders being given opportunities, ideally young NZers who can be propelled into bigger and better things. We also want to see the academy acting as a true feeder system towards the seniors. But we also, more than anything, don’t want to compromise on results and performances. This is what that looks like. The team is winning games and getting important contributions from a quartet youngsters who are holding the door open for more to follow. If they were only playing kids and losing each week, nobody would care. If they were winning every week with a bunch of veteran battlers then that’d be cool but not as inspiring. But definitely still cool... kinda hard to envision that though, to be honest.

Because it’s the combination of all those priorities as well as what has been an incredibly enjoyable style of play which is where the magic happens. Younger players with more hunger and energy and a need to prove themselves tend to be more amenable to slicker footy anyway – check out the average ages of teams in the Netherlands which is a nation famous for tactical innovation – except that in the big bad world of professional football it’s a gamble to rely on unproven players. Three losses in a row can mean a crisis and most coaches don’t have the time to take that risk when it’s their job on the line first of all.

Yeah but you know what? If you believe that the talent is there then all that means is that there’s a market inefficiency. A demographic of players good enough to be successful only they’re not getting the chance. That’s exactly the kind of thing that a team with the unique existential challenges of the Wellington Phoenix could take advantage of. They did... and so far you’ve gotta say it’s working.

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