All Whites vs Australia 2025 Soccer Ashes: The Aftermath
We managed to get one of the curses lifted. The All Whites lost both games against the Socceroos, beaten in Canberra and beaten in Auckland, meaning that they’ve now lost nine consecutive games against the Aussies dating back more than two decades. But at least Chris Wood’s goal at Mt Smart Stadium meant we avoided a sixth consecutive game without even scoring against those jokers.
Grim though that may sound... for large portions of this series, especially in the first game, the All Whites played great. Some very silky passing and lovely combinations. Decent chances being created (albeit maybe not enough of them). They even had a bit of a high press going in Canberra. Problem was they didn’t put anything away and then conceded some soft ones down the other end. Darren Bazeley said afterwards that these games are often about the moments and thus here we are thinking back on a couple of games where this team’s potential was raised even higher... but the results refused to follow.
There’s frustration here because these losses fit too comfortably into the pattern we keep seeing under Darren Bazeley where good performances don’t lead to enough scoring chances and therefore don’t lead to enough goals and therefore don’t lead to wins. But as the dust settles, you’d have to say that they’re getting closer. The win over Ivory Coast in June was a huge milestone for this squad and they were minutes away from getting a draw in Canberra. The fact that they scored in the second game means that the All Whites have hit the net in five of their last six matches against non-Oceania opponents despite all but one of them being ranked way higher than Aotearoa (USA, Malaysia, Ivory Coast, Ukraine, and Australia – spot the odd one out).
And Australia are really good, let’s be fair. Undefeated in ten games since Tony Popovic became the coach, they also made the knockouts of the last World Cup and the current FIFA Rankings reckon they’re the second-best team we’ll face this year: Colombia have the jump on them but the Aussies rank higher than Ivory Coast, Ukraine, Poland, Norway, and Ecuador. While this was a rotated group from Tony Popovic, that didn’t mean a weakened squad. If anything, it meant a hungrier squad. Poppa’s been notoriously stingy with handing out caps beyond his established core – emphasising that earning selection and earning playing time are two separate steps - so this was a rare opportunity for guys like Max Balard, Mo Toure, Nestory Irankunda and a few others to strut their stuff. Those fellas weren’t about to let those overdue opportunities slip.
The All Whites won’t need to be as good as Australia to get a result at the World Cup – the expanded event is going to water it down enough that we might even get to face a fellow nation outside the top-50 rankings (the draw is in December so we’ll find out then). Yet for about an hour on Friday night, and even in a few patches on Tuesday evening, they were. The gap is closing even though they didn’t get much to show for during the Soccer Ashes.
Game One: 0-1 in Canberra
Friday night was the one that got away. It was yet another scoreless defeat against the Aussies and it also happened to snap a nine-game overall scoring streak of the All Whites dating back to the loss against Mexico almost exactly a year earlier. Those things don’t sound very nice but actually the lads were awesome for about 60-70 minutes of that game and were very unfortunate to lose to an 87th minute Max Balard goal. Bit of a lapse letting him get loose in the box and a kick in the guts ensued. Plenty of encouragement to be found in that performance though.
Chris Wood missed a couple of chances in the first half, including a 1v1 after Sarpreet Singh had slipped one in behind for him. Paul Izzo made a couple of good stops (on debut for Oz). NZ probably didn’t create enough to say they they absolutely should have scored but much of that was due to a very good Aussie back three led by captain-for-the-day Milos Degenek. Those blokes won heaps of headers and continually got bodies in the way – six of NZ’s nine shots were from outside the area. Even still, you kinda assume that if you give Chris Wood multiple sights of goal, he’s going to score at least one regardless of difficulty. That didn’t happen and the All Whites were left to regret it.
Where the game really swung was with the substitutions. Australia were way more effective after the introduction of guys like Mo Toure and Nestory Irankunda, not to mention goal-scorer Max Balard. On the flipside, the All Whites got worse with their subs. That’s not to pick on the guys who the All Whites brought on (Barbarouses, Elliot, Rufer, McGarry, Old, Surman), it’s entirely about those who were taken off... particularly Chris Wood and Ryan Thomas on the hour mark. It was the usual friendly game drama where Darren Bazeley is forced to be careful about managing the workload of his star players – by his own admission he would never substitute Chris Wood for tactical reasons. In a tournament, this wouldn’t be a concession he’d have to make.
It’s also a reflection of the players they’re missing from this squad. Taking off Ryan Thomas isn’t such a drama if you can bring on Marko Stamenic (or vice versa, as the team was initially going to be before Stamenic aggravated a minor knock and went back to Swansea). Libby Cacace, Matt Garbett, and maybe even Ben Waine as well. We’ve got unprecedented depth these days and that’s why they’ve been able to absorb those absences and still roll out a side capable of dominating for an hour against Australia (albeit a rotated Australian squad). It’s the bench where those absences are felt.
But up until those substitutions started happening, the New Zealanders were easily the better side. The All Whites don’t often press too high yet they brought a very organised and selective strategy into this one which really had the Socceroos scrambling at the back trying to play their way out. The kiwi midfield was brilliant. Ryan Thomas was the best player on the park while he was out there, fitting seamlessly into the squad after six years away. So smooth on the ball, so smart with his passing. Singh, Just, and McCowatt all linked up nicely behind Wood – although a little more directness wouldn’t have gone astray.
The might have found that directness if they’d had more dynamic fullbacks. With Just and McCowatt out wide, they’re going to drift around allowing the fullbacks to use that space... problem was the only two A-League players in the eleven were in those positions: Francis De Vries and Tim Payne. There’s a difference in levels there but the main issue was match fitness with those two still in preseason mode (and Payne having only featured on limited minutes as a centre-back during the Nix’s Aussie Cup stuff). Ordinarily, Libby Cacace would have been there to take advantage – he’d appeared in 26 of the previous 27 internationals, with the only one he missed being due to suspension. Cacace started all but one of those games.
Game Two: 1-3 in Auckland
Despite a couple of scares, Bazeley’s squad had a clean slate of health for the second match so he only made two changes: Ben Old came in for Callum McCowatt (who’d done ninety mins in G1) and Finn Surman rotated in for Michael Boxall. Nothing else needed to change... although it was a different story for the Socceroos who made six alterations, including starts for the buggers who’d turned the game around off the bench in the previous outing.
With 18,213 punters turning up to Mt Smart Stadium on a Tuesday evening, the hope was that New Zealand would be able to repeat the efforts from Friday night with a little more clinical edge. After a slow start, we did seem to be building into something like that... only to concede a soft goal ten minutes before half-time. Balard picked up the ball in the centre-circle after Thomas hadn’t been able to reach a loose one. An early pass was played through for Mo Toure to run onto and Tyler Bindon seemed to be in position to deal with it... only to slide over the ball and allow Toure to charge past and score. Bindon’s made challenges like that a bunch of times for Reading but he got this one wrong.
Tim Payne missed a great chance to quickly make it 1-1. Then NZ conceded another gentle goal ten mins into the second spell. Again it came from defensive transition as an attack broke down around the Aussie penalty area and a quick ball forward put Irankunda into space. He drove into the box and scored without further assistance. FDV couldn’t catch up with him. Bindon was too stand-off-ish. Three minutes later Chris Wood matched that with a smoothly taken goal, poking the ball inside the far post after an early cross from De Vries had eluded Milos Degenek. Hope restored... for about a minute before Mo Toure’s quick feet allowed him to skip past Surman and still beat Crocombe to the ball.
Fortunately it didn’t get any worse and we’ve got VAR to thank for that. An offside in the build-up prevented Toure from completing a hatty and then another second look saved Bindon from what would have been a very unfair red card. All the same, a 3-1 defeat was bad enough. The All Whites weren’t able to recreate enough of what worked for them in the first game... although we did get one lovely moment with ten to play when Luke Brooke-Smith was gifted his international debut at seventeen years of age.
Okay, so why weren’t they able to match the first game? Fatigue could be a reason. The pressure of a big home crowd maybe stifled them too – for whatever reason, this team’s best mahi tends to come in away games where they can play up the underdog tag (and perhaps also keep a more compact shape). There were also individual mistakes/inefficiencies at the back which they mostly avoided in the other match. Like, if Bindon makes that challenge and keeps it at 0-0 then what followed might have been different.
But there’s another factor which doesn’t have anything to do with the All Whites: maybe they weren’t even that much worse, maybe Australia was just better? All three goals came from Toure or Irankunda exposing our centre-backs with their direct running... those guys only played fifteen minutes in the first game and the same patterns were there in those limited windows. Martin Boyle wasn’t doing that. This was a specific match-up (well, two of them) that the All Whites didn’t seem able to handle. Plus Australia didn’t try to play out from the back in the same way, negating the swarming pressure that NZ applied in Canberra.
That’s what happens when you play twice against a stronger opponent. They’re more capable of making adjustments. Aussie leant into what worked for them and away from what didn’t whereas Aotearoa didn’t have the weaponry available to do similar things. Like Baze said, it could have been different if we’d owned the big moments... but we were also probably spoiled by the first hour of these three building up our expectations beyond what was realistic. Because on the whole this was better than we usually do against Oz. At least we scored a bloody goal this time.
Thoughts & Reaction
This trend of our centre-backs getting waxed by pacey forwards is not one that sits nicely, especially since Bindon and Surman are probably the quickest of our options. Boxall used to be lightning quick but at 37yo he’s obviously dropped a step or two, however the Auckland game reflected why Boxall’s veteran presence is so valuable alongside 21yo Surman and 20yo Bindon. Nando Pijnaker’s injured but he’s dropped way back in the mix ever since Bindon emerged anyway, same with Tommy Smith – between them they’ve got one international cap in the past twelve months. It’s between Bindon, Surman, and Boxall for the two starting spots and whoever is picked, we can’t be letting them get isolated by transitional attacks like this.
Bindon had his first bad game for the All Whites in G2 (and even in a clunky one, he still produced two or three superb defensive interventions). His precocious youth is so much a part of his success story that it’s easy to overlook his inexperience. Gotta remember that he’s also in a tricky situation at Sheffield United where he’s only on loan at a club that’s lost every game this season and that means he’s suddenly under pressure in a way that he’s never known before. It was always a supportive environment at Reading, first because there were no expectations and then because he’d won the fans over with his excellence. The first two years of his pro career were all ups. Now he’s going through a down spell for the first time and it felt like there was a hint of hesitation, a hint of doubt in his mahi against Australia. But he’ll get through it.
We definitely missed the unique combo of strength and mobility that Marko Stamenic offers. These two games and the 2024 Nations Cup are the only times that Stam has been absent during the Bazeley Era (and he’s started every game he’s been available for – Bazeley’s never used him as a substitute... although that could change with Ryan Thomas bringing extra competition in the midfield). In fact, of the four players who’ve appeared in at least 20/26 games under Baze, three of them weren’t here. The others were Cacace and Garbett, alongside Eli Just who has only missed one game under Baze and that was against Qatar where he probably would have been subbed on except the game got abandoned before that could happen. And since speed seems to be a theme from this series, Cacace and Garbett are also among our quickest players,.
What’s our best midfield? Kinda think it’s Stamenic and Thomas with Singh further forward but the debate is misleading because the 2025 Soccer Ashes showed yet again that it’s not merely about the best eleven. You’ve got to have impactful players coming off the bench. You’ve got to have depth that can rotate in from game to game without dragging things down. With Stamenic, Thomas, Bell, and Rufer competing for two places and then guys like Singh, Just, McCowatt, and Garbett all in the mix for the attacking mid role (and the wide spots too for that matter) the All Whites are in a good place... when they’re all available.
Ceri Evans was 17 years and 45 days old when he debuted for the All Whites back in 1980. He remains the youngest known debutant for the All Whites but Luke Brooke-Smith is now in second place after being subbed on for the last dozen minutes at Mt Smart Stadium aged 17 years and 95 days. LBS was 16y 199d when he became the youngest ever Wellington Phoenix player. He was 16y 261d when he scored (also at Mt Smart Stadium) to become that club’s youngest goal-scorer. This lad is breaking a lot of records.
LBS has the opportunity to be selected for World Cups of all three age-grades within the space of one year. He’s going to be in the U20 World Cup squad for later this month. He’s still eligible for the U17 WC in November too, though his presence will depend on whether they can sort something out with the Wellington Phoenix since their season will have begun by then. And now having made a senior debut, encompassing the idea that he offers something a little different to other NZ forwards despite his youth, he’s firmly in the picture to challenge for a spot at the FIFA World Cup next year. Milly Clegg did the same thing a couple years ago, scoring at both the U17s and U20s before being selected for the 2023 Women’s World Cup (albeit not getting on the pitch).
Players who are locks for the World Cup squad (barring injury):
Max Crocombe, Alex Paulsen, Michael Boxall, Finn Surman, Tyler Bindon, Libby Cacace, Francis De Vries, Tim Payne, Joe Bell, Marko Stamenic, Ryan Thomas, Matt Garbett, Sarpreet Singh, Elijah Just, Callum McCowatt, Ben Old, Chris Wood, Kosta Barbarouses
Kosta’s place could come under threat if Ben Waine and Max Mata both get cracking but that’s not looking very likely at the moment. That’s 18/23 players (hopefully 26 if they decide to keep the expanded squads from last time), which doesn’t leave much room for newcomers. There’ll be another goalie and probably three more defenders – right now that’d be Nik Tzanev, Nando Pijnaker and Tommy Smith... possibly with Callan Elliot too. That’d leave 1-4 spots up for grabs between recent candidates like Waine, Mata, Alex Rufer, Bill Tuiloma, Logan Rogerson, and yes Luke Brooke-Smith; emerging/re-emerging overseas pros like Kees Sims, George Stanger, Matt Dibley-Dias, and Dalton Wilkins; and whichever of the array of Wellington Phoenix and Auckland FC locals breaks through in a hurry. Others like Owen Parker-Price and Andre De Jong have the ability but don’t really have unique enough profiles to stand out against the incumbents.
The longest active starting streak in the All Whites now belongs to... Sarpreet Singh. He’s been picked in each of the previous seven fixtures. Max Crocombe and Joe Bell are both at six games. It was previously Marko Stamenic at eight games before he missed this tour with a minor niggle. Bazeley was able to rotate a little during the Oceania WCQs so this stat doesn’t have any serious meaning to it but it’s a nice wee development for Sarpreet Singh who’s been able to maintain a great level of fitness and availability for both club and country of late. Very notable. One awful free kick aside, he was pretty quiet in the second game but was a massive part of what worked so well in the first one.
Chris Wood has scored 12 goals in 16 games for Darren Bazeley. He’s scored 45 goals in 86 internationals overall. He is two caps shy of equalling Ivan Vicelich’s appearance record. It feels like not that long ago that he surpassed Vaughan Coveny’s scoring record and already he’s left him in the dust with a 16-goal lead. No other active player has reached 10 international goals yet (closest are: Kosta Barbarouses with 9, then Ben Waine & Eli Just with 8 each).
The last time Ryan Thomas played for the All Whites was the debut game of Joe Bell, Callum McCowatt, Eli Just... and Elliot Collier. It was a 3-1 loss against Ireland. Players who’ve debuted in between that game and Thomas’ return to the national team:
Nando Pijnaker, Max Mata, James McGarry, Niko Kirwan, Kelvin Kalua, Marko Stamenic, Matt Garbett, Joe Champness, Francis De Vries, Dalton Wilkins, Alex Greive, Oli Sail, Ben Old, Ben Waine, Jamie Searle, Callan Elliot, Kyle Adams, Tyler Bindon, Finn Surman, Fin Conchie, Lukas Kelly-Heald, Oskar van Hattum, Alex Paulsen, Sam Sutton, Jesse Randall, and Liam Gillion.
Also, James McGarry’s debut came the game after Ryan Thomas’ previous match and until this tour he hadn’t played since. His absence was only three days less than Thommo’s. McGarry made two short sub cameos here and you know what? He looked decent. There isn’t much room for him in a full strength All Whites squad at the moment but it’ll be exciting to see what he brings to Brisbane Roar after a tough couple years in Scotland (with a bit of Greece at the tailend).
Remaining All Whites games in 2025:
vs Poland in Chorzów on 10 October 7.45am (NZT)
vs Norway in Olso on 15 October at 5am (NZT)
vs Colombia in Florida, USA on 16 November
vs Ecuador in New Jersey, USA on 19 November
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