All Whites WCQ Quest: Battered But Victorious, 1-0 vs Tahiti

That was gruelling. Feeling bruised just from watching it. But from somewhere amidst a fog of fouls, Liberato Cacace popped up with his first senior international goal to give the All Whites a 1-0 win over Tahiti in the semi-finals of the Oceania World Cup qualifiers. The kiwis will face Solomon Islands in the final on Thursday morning. A win there and they’ll be just one game away from potentially making it to only the nation’s third World Cup finals.

(Remember when we drew 1-1 with Italy in 2010? Well, if the All Whites get back there then they’ll have played in the same number of World Cups as Italy have since: one).

Ultimately all that matters is the win and the All Whites understood the assignment. Don’t dwell on the margin of victory. Tahiti never even came close to scoring, unleashing only a few spare shots from outside the box. They were always within range thanks to a combative defensive performance but the game felt more like an exercise in how long they could hold on until they conceded rather than anything winnable. Though, damn, they did hold on for a bloody long time. That was a brutal ninety minutes. And here’s why...

38 combined fouls between the two teams. Tahiti had a clear plan to be very aggressive, they knew that they were gonna have to fight for every little crumb. A few hard fouls early on had the kiwis frustrated. A few early yellow cards popped up as a result yet the Tahitians knew what they were doing. They didn’t lose their heads. They only went far enough to ensure it was a scrap of a game without any real flow and, yup, 38 fouls in ninety minutes will do that. The All Whites had to match the physicality and therefore both teams ended with even foul counts. Bottom line being that constant disruptions from the toot of that whistle, not to mention the injury breaks on the other side of them, gave Tahiti the type of game in which they knew they could hang about.

And they got the balance so right. First ten minutes you’d have been stunned to know that this game would end without a red card and yet it did. Tahiti were rough but they weren’t dirty. They did what they needed to do to give themselves a chance. However it’s a major credit to the All Whites that they didn’t freak out or overreact, didn’t rise to the bait, they just stuck to their processes. Patience and discipline were the words of the day.

Danny Hay went with the top dogs as expected. Couple wrinkles to that, with Marko Stamenic missing with a minor injury issue, plus pretty sure Niko Kirwan (who started here) and Tim Payne will alternate at RB for the semi and final. Also it was back to the three-man defence that we saw against Fiji although with a different midfield shape ahead of it. Looked like a diamond with Chris Wood a lone striker ahead of the quartet. 5-4-1. Stefan Marinovic in goal. Bill Tuiloma, Winston Reid, Nando Pijnaker at CB. Kirwan and Libby Cacace at wing-back. Joe Bell as CDM, Matt Garbett and Eli Just ahead of him, Callum McCowatt ahead of them. Plus Chris Wood. Relevant point: five of those blokes were starting their first game of the tournament.

That last bit is relevant because this game had parallels to that PNG game that began the Oceania Qualifiers for this team. Up against a strong and well-organised defensive team with fresh combinations and perhaps a little bit of rust. Plus both games ended up as 1-0 wins thanks to goals scored midway through the second half just as things were beginning to get a touch frisky. This was a stronger All Whites team than that first match but the stakes were also higher. You also had Francois Hapipi playing the role of the Komorong brothers with an outrageously good central defensive performance.

Look, the All Whites should have scored earlier than they did. It was a tough slog against a deep Tahiti defensive line but they created some chances and if there’s one major frustration from this match it’s that there will be games in the future where the AWs cannot afford to be that wasteful. Garbett put a header over the top about half an hour in that was an especially egregious miss. McCowatt smacked a couple shots straight at the keeper. Reid had one cleared off the line. Tuiloma’s aerial set piece work went uncapitalised. He also had a goal-line clearance against him. Eli Just drilled one across goal on the volley. But then Libby Cacace did this so all goods...

First All Whites goal for Libby. Not quite as flash as the one he scored for the OlyWhites at the Olympics but that’s fine. Still made a great run and got himself in the right area to capitalise on the chance. Showed the confidence to stray from his usual area when plenty of left-backs would have lingered back after the initial pass got deflected. You have to take a gamble now and then when you’re chasing a goal. That one paid off.

Cacace also delivered with a fresh celebration. Bit of a trippy one since the VAR symbology did bring up fears that, with VAR in use for the knockouts of this tournament, maybe they’d find a reason to disallow it... but nah everyone was onside. If anything there was a potential foul on Chris Wood that might’ve come into contention if something else had been wrong with the goal.

Gonna assume that the reason for the season was having his previous professional goal overturned by a rather dodgy VAR decision. This was back in the Sint-Truiden days...

Cacace had a strong game as always. Joe Bell was a bit off his best, probably because of the lack of flow in the game, but he was still a step above. Makes such a difference to have guys like that in the team. Note that the one defeat that the All Whites have had since returning from the pandemic, 3-1 vs Jordan in January, did not involve either Cacace or Bell.

Elsewhere it was a quiet one from Chris Wood... but not an ineffective one. He did some very selfless work occupying defenders and trying to create room for others. Don’t wanna overlook the work of the NZ back three either. It was a relatively unthreatened evening for them but that’s partly because they were excellent at winning the first ball and ensuring that Tahiti couldn’t spark anything. Shut down counters before they could happen. And Pijnaker in particular has such a wonderful passing range... it’s not always consistent, he does shank a few, but with more experience you can expect him to develop into an outstanding distributor from the back.

Winston Reid and Bill Tuiloma both earned their 30th caps in this match, while Tommy Smith made it to 46 as a late sub and Chris Wood went third-equal all-time alongside Vaughan Coveny with his 64th cap. Just a couple statistical notes there. Or how about the fact that alongside The Woodsman becoming the All Whites’ greatest goal scorer we’ve also seen six different players score their first ever international goals at this comp: Waine, Just, Lewis, Greive, Rogerson, and Cacace. Plus De Jong and, Greive, and Tuiloma all scored their second. Other than Wood, Kosta Barbarouses (4 goals) is the only guy in this wider squad with more than two. Gotta get Marco Rojas and his five back in there ASAP.

And there we are. A legendary performance? Absolutely not. But a composed and controlled performance. A patient and disciplined performance. That’s all it’s gotta be at this stage and if you’ve been paying attention to the rest of the draw then you should know by now that the days of strolling over the top of Oceania teams is long gone. PNG and Tahiti in particular have shown up with some formidable tactical strategies that laugh in the face of the reductive cliches about naturally talented but undisciplined Island footy players. As it happens the Solomon Islands beat both those teams already. That’s who’ll be waiting on Thursday at 6am with a spot in the intercontinental playoffs on the line. Cannot wait.

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