Where Are We At With The Welly Nix’s Offseason?
You’ll forgive a humble indie sports site from Aotearoa for taking a break from the Wellington Phoenix beat to focus on the New Zealand Olympic footy teams for a wee while there. But the Olympics are done now and the kiwi footballers from therein are already back to tearing it up for their clubs so it must be time to check in on how the Phoenix are doing.
Preseason Panic
The next A-League season kicks off at very end of October. Exact fixtures are still to be confirmed but that’s the date, with the W-League beginning two weeks later (will there be a Wellington Phoenix presence there too? Bloody hope so). The 2021-22 season will also mark the start of the new Paramount+ broadcasting deal which may or may not live up to the hype but it’ll surely be better than the Fox Sports shambles... remember when the Nix’s first goal of last season happened during a glitch-out?
Of course there’s one big sonofabitch of a worry still lingering over everything and that’s the current covid outbreak in Oz. You’d hope things will be back to regular-ish transmission by the time the season begins but we can’t take anything for granted. The Nix have already once reaffirmed their commitment to compete this season which means that there’s a possibility that they won’t. Best not to worry about worst case scenarios yet (or another financially crippling year in Wollongong) - although the FFA Cup is clearly in jeapardy. The Nix never do any good in that comp anyway so it might not be too much of a loss if they can’t get over to Australia for their round of 32 game (against either Western United or Newcastle Jets) on 30 August. Would suggest that’s an unlikely one as things stand.
Particularly when preseason itself was under threat for a while there. With the travel bubble to Australia closed temporarily, that left a number of players and coaches stranded at a time when things were supposed to be ripping back into focus. The kiwi based players were all goods... although quite a few were away at the Olympics. Hence overall numbers on day one will have been pretty slim for Chris Greenacre as he stepped into temporary head coaching duties for the club yet again. Tim Payne, Oli Sail, David Ball, Alex Rufer, Louis Fenton, and James McGarry were the only first teamers available from day one.
Thankfully the club were able to work the logistics out and things will ramp up again next Monday once the bulk of fellas get out of their mandatory two-week quarantine...
Wellington Phoenix: “Phoenix players Joshua Laws and Jaushua Sotirio, as well as Coach Ufuk Talay, Assistant Coach Giancarlo Italiano and Head Physio Ben Venn are now in managed isolation in Auckland for the required 14-day period; they are scheduled to travel to Wellington on Monday 16 August to join the New Zealand-based players currently at training. In addition, Phoenix players Callan Elliot, Clayton Lewis, Sam Sutton and Ben Waine have completed their OlyWhites duties at the Tokyo Olympics and have now returned to New Zealand – alongside Phoenix Reserves players Ben Old and Alex Paulsen. These players will also join the squad in Wellington for the week of Monday 16 August at the conclusion of their 14-day period managed isolation period.”
That’s about three weeks after the first wave of players began their training, while guys like Gary Hooper and Steven Taylor travelled into the country earlier and are each now out of quarantine and in training. Reno Piscopo will be a wee bit longer coming back from the Olympics via Australia while new signing Nicholas Pennington is travelling from Italy so he’ll be awhile away too.
Squad Building
Did someone say new signing? Hells yeah. Nick Pennington is Italian but qualifies as a local player thanks to an Aussie father. He’s 22 years old having come up in the Cagliari system, getting on the bench for the first team there a couple times but never actually playing for the Serie A side. He then went on a developmental loan to Olbia in Serie C which resulted in him signing for them on a permanent basis and over the last few years has played 111 times for them in that comp with 6 goals and 10 assists from midfield (176 games with 15g/15a in all comps in his career going by the Welly Nix release... which is just quoting his TransferMarkt page). He’s been talking about maybe representing Australia for at least three years now so this was an astute move from the Nixers whose scouting department continue to produce the goods. Pennington’s Aussie links aren’t huge, his dad was born in Perth yet from an English family while his mum is Italian through and through, but he’s got the passport and some good intentions so sweet as. Let’s make it happen via the Wellington Phoenix. He’s already featured a handful of times for the Aussie U23s including in their extended pre-Olympic squad in June alongside Reno Piscopo.
There are clearly some Piscopo parallels to this transfer. He’s an Aussie age-grade dude playing out of Italy with strong Italian heritage. Pennington’s been signed on a two year deal as a free, not quite the same as Piscopo’s three years with a transfer fee. By the way, Reno’s entering the third of those years so unless he signs a new deal it doesn’t look like the Nix will recoup that money with an overseas sale... at this point it’d be counterproductive for Piscopo to do that when he’s available for free in 11 months so yeah. There has been talk linking him to other A-League clubs but not sure how valid that is. The focus will be on a healthy and productive campaign with the Nix because otherwise those other options don’t exist. Enough of that tangent now.
Piscopo will surely have played a part in convincing Pennington into a black and yellow jersey... yet the real comparison here is to Cam Devlin. He’s basically a direct replacement for Cammy. A direct positional replacement, that is, not a stylistic replacement. Pennington’s not gonna offer the same tenacious defensive coverage but he will bring much more attacking purpose and more passing fluidity. In the wider picture that might even prove more valuable to the team, it was largely his ability in possession that earned Clayton Lewis that spot last season so you know it’s something that Uffie is looking for from his midfield.
The other recent signing was Callan Elliot. Returning to the club after a season spent watching others play in Greece. He followed Tony Popovich to FC Xanthi but then Poppa didn’t last very long and there was drama abounding and Callan never actually got to play even though he was there the whole time. Xanthi do still have a few Aussies around but Paul Izzo is the only one of the Poppa/A-League crew still there. Both Popovich sons as well as Matt Jurman and Josh Brillante have left and now so has Callan Elliot.
Little bit of an odd fit here as Talay had mentioned moving Tim Payne back to right back and they’d already re-signed Louis Fenton. There’s space on the roster after some of the departures for this to simply be an opportunistic addition of a well-liked former player... but it does kinda look more like Payne will stay at CB and it’ll be Fenton vs Elliot at right back. Talay did mention in the press release that Elliot “can play multiple positions” which suggests he’s also in line for some minutes on the wings too.
Here’s how the squad is looking right now...
Alex Rufer, Ben Waine, David Ball (I), Jaushua Sotirio, Louis Fenton, Oli Sail, Reno Piscopo, Sam Sutton, Tim Payne, Clayton Lewis, James McGarry, Joshua Laws, Steven Taylor (I), Gary Hooper (I), Callan Elliot, Nicholas Pennington
That’s 16 players on senior contracts, leaving 4-7 spots to be filled and up to two of those can be import players. One more will also need to be an U21 local to fill out that quota alongside Waine and Sutton – Ben Old and Alex Paulsen will be a part of the first team in some capacity, whether on academy deals or senior deals, so they’re the obvious candidates. If Paulsen isn’t signed then another backup keeper will have to be.
So there’s more to follow here. They did want to bring back Tomer Hemed even after signing Gary Hooper so another import striker is very much in the mix and an Uli Davila replacemennt is gonna have to be also. Honestly central midfield is about the only position that feels fixed right now and even then there’s room for an upgrade if they wanted to drop an import into that pot.
Now here are the players from last season who will not be a part of Uffie’s third Nix squad...
Stefan Marinovic – Signed with Hapoel Nof HaGalil in Israel
Ulises Davila – A well publicised move to Macarthur across the ditch
Tomer Hemed – Liked Sydney so much that he stayed, signing with Western Sydney Wanderers
Cameron Devlin – Signed with Newcastle Jets but now is poised to leave for Hearts in Scotland without ever playing for the Jets
Liam McGing – Released at the end of his contract, no word on his next move yet
Luke DeVere – Same deal as above only add in a long term injury
Matt Ridenton – Also released having not played a single minute of the Nix’s final 16 matches
Mirza Muratovic – Released as well – two goals early on but then only one short subs appearance in the last 18 games of the campaign
Charles Lokoli-Ngoy – 114 minutes across nine games off the bench... no surprises he’s been released too
Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi – Still had a year on his contract but wasn’t playing (only 68 mins all last season) and thus he was released by mutual consent and is now playing for Auckland United
The Alumni
It’s only Phoenix adjacent at this stage but Gianni Stensness and Cam Devlin both getting European moves for transfer fees, gotta love it. Stensness got a heap of words about his situation in the last Flying Kiwis. He’s joining Joe Bell at Viking FK where he’ll go straight into the first team and hopefully shore up a defence that has contributed to some high scoring games lately. It’s a great move for him, a really cool club to be a part of at a strong level which could also help him progress his career even further as is the expected case for former Phoenix Academy star Joe Bell. Sweet as.
As for Cam Devlin, doesn’t the Scottish Premiership sound right about perfect for a player like him? They’ll love him over there if that gets over the line and it’s already BBC Official so no reason why it shouldn’t. Gotta take care of the visa permutations is all. A buyout clause has been triggered and a contract has already been agreed to the tune of multiple years and he’s just waiting for confirmation before he can travel over there.
Hearts gaffer Robbie Neilson: “We’re looking for someone in there who retains the ball well but also can compete, cover the ground, win tackles and pass forward. The stats guys flagged him up then we watched him and we really liked him. We’ve got the deal done so I think he’ll do well for us. This deal has been going on for two months now so he should be worth the wait. We've been working in the background trying to get it sorted. We're delighted that we're nearly there, but we aren't there yet.”
Two months in the works... he only signed with the Newcastle Jets six weeks ago! Doesn’t make a difference from a Phoenix point of view as he was poised to leave at the end of his contract regardless but the bloody Jets are gonna get a five figure transfer fee out of a player who never even came close to playing for them (and since he’s been at the Olympics... has never even reported for training, lol).
Ah well, clever business on their end. Can’t fault it. The Nix got close to a reported NZ$1.5m for Sarpreet Singh and Libby Cacace combined (the numbers have been disputed) but we’ve all gotta put food on the table somehow so fair play to the Jets. Not how much of that cash trickles back to the Phoenix from either deal, they could sure use it about now, but there should be a little bit at least. Stensenss’ deal is apparently up into the six figure range.
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