An Autopsy of the Wellington Phoenix’s 2025-26 A-League Men’s Season
They were hoping to rebound from a rotten campaign last time by getting back into the playoffs, instead they were flirting with a wooden spoon for a while there, and in the end they settled for eighth place. In amongst all that the Wellington Phoenix lost three more derby games including a 5-0 thrashing at home which caused Giancarlo Italiano to resign as coach. Their perennial ‘in case of emergency’ man Chris Greenacre took over as interim and this time translated that into a permanent role, fourth time lucky for Greeny. They had a Golden Boot contending striker and signed two experienced All Whites midseason. They also went through three starting goalkeepers and conceded some ridiculous goals.
The Nix dished out four more ALM debuts to academy graduates and used 29 different players overall. They broke a nine-year drought with a win in Melbourne against the Victory but they only had one winning streak the entire way. Granted, they also only lost consecutive games on three occasions with all three being the game immediately after a derby loss. Now they face an offseason full of uncertainty with as many as 14 first teamers coming off contract, including their entire haul of imports.
What made this Phoenix season so frustrating is that they weren’t even a bad team. There were flashes of a very competitive A-League outfit in there, such as the clean sheets wins away to Brisbane and Sydney, but even when they managed to sustain that stuff for a full ninety, they never reproduced those performances with any consistency. Case in point: those stats about winning and losing streaks. To make it even worse, it was often individual mistakes that spoiled it for them (although in fairness not from Isaac Hughes, who gained a reputation for those last season but continued his maturation to be named the club’s Young Player of the Year).
So often they were their own worst enemies... and that includes the Chief as coach. Gotta respect his ambition in attempting to remix this team as a modern possession-based unit with a high defensive line and plenty of counter-pressing intensity. The problem was they didn’t really have the players for it. Josh Oluwayemi made an adequate effort trying to adapt but sweeping outside the area is not his natural game... and the backline lacked recovery pace allowing for huge vulnerabilities from early balls in behind.
Now, admittedly, that was kinda the only way they were getting broken down while they played the high line. They’d give up 3-4 big chances per game from those situations (even more against the likes of Auckland and Newcastle) but they weren’t getting torn up any other way. If they’d had a bit more luck in those early weeks, finished off a couple extra chances and won some more games, then perhaps they’d have figured it out. Confidence does wondrous things in football.
But they didn’t figure it out and the rot set in as Italiano tinkered and compromised in search of a formula that would work. Giancarlo Italiano seemed to be a boss who asked a lot from his players, with lots of instructions to follow, some might even call him an over-complicator. That’s all well and good when you’re winning but those instructions don’t always fall upon open ears when the losses mount up. And it’s pretty easy to pinpoint three major forks in the road where this Welly Nix season went astray: the three games against Auckland FC.
Derby Damage
Giancarlo Italiano’s job didn’t become untenable because of the team’s overall record, it was the derby games that pushed it over the edge. Three more defeats in a row, each one worse than the last. The other 15 games he was in charge for went like this:
DWDLWLWLWDWLDLD (5W, 5D, 5L with a -3 goal difference)
That’s not good... but it’s not resignation worthy. It was the derbies that doomed him... and rightly so, those were the biggest three games of the season and the team failed to deliver with their feet or with their brains, getting tactically outworked and then crumbling under the pressure. Those three games were enough to warrant Chiefy’s abdication, especially when you take into account how they happened...
Game one was a 2-1 loss at home in which AFC got two red cards and the Nix still couldn’t find an equaliser against nine men (also they conceded in the opening minute of the match).
Game two was a 3-1 loss up in Auckland where they gave away two penalties and had Manjrekar James set off midway through. Josh Oluwayemi had his best game as a Phoenix player, saving both pens (although Francis de Vries scored on the rebound for his miss) and Alex Rufer scored a belter yet they still fell way short.
Game three requires no reminders, that was the 5-0 loss at home that led to Chiefy announcing his resignation at the press conference afterwards. Oluwayemi scored a comical own goal to start it off and things only went downhill from there (it was 4-0 at half-time).
It’s not just that they lost all three. Or that they’ve lost all six encompassing last year’s very similar trajectory. It’s that they’ve been crushed on the mental side as well as the footballing side, unable to channel their energy productively and melting into goo at the first instance of adversity. They have conceded first in all six games against AFC (and given how AFC have never, in two full seasons, won a game after they themselves conceded first... that’s a pretty significant issue). These games instantly assumed massive cultural significance and the Phoenix keep getting embarrassed in them. Something had to change.
To further illustrate how much weight the derbies carry, the Nix have also lost the game immediately after the derby on the last five occasions. They did bounce back with a couple of wins after the very first one but then the haunting began and the suffering spilled over beyond the derby fixtures. The number one thing that Chris Greenacre can do to make himself a successful head coach for this team is to win the next derby. They simply have to get this monkey off their back - even a draw would be huge progress. Wellington finished eighth and were eliminated from finals contention with a week to go whereas Auckland only dropped to third due to a last-gasp winner in Adelaide’s final game. Yet if you remove the derby games from their records, their respective points tallies the Aussie clubs were identical...
A-League Record This Season Excluding NZ Derby Games
Auckland FC – 8 W | 9 D | 6 L | 32 GF | 27 GA | +5 GD | 33 PTS
Wellington Phoenix – 9 W | 6 D | 8 L | 34 GF | 38 GA | -4 GD | 33 PTS
Chiefball vs Greenacreage
When Giancarlo Italiano surrendered his throne, the Nix were still talking about a playoff push but were actually in much more danger of collecting a wooden spoon. Chris Greenacre’s fourth interim stint began with a stutter as he kept Italiano’s team and formation intact for the first two matches, only making one enforced change to the starting line-up on each occasion, but in the third game he finally shook things up. He did what he needed to do, simplifying the plan and giving the team a little more defensive structure. Four at the back, two up front. Baffling why he didn’t do that at the very first opportunity when it was so obvious that the team was struggling with Chiefy’s intricate instructions - partly because of midseason additions getting up to speed, partly because confidence was very low, and partly because they didn’t really have the right players to see it through.
As soon as Greeny stripped it back, the wins started flowing. They beat Perth 2-0 to snap a seven-game winless run. They beat Brisbane 2-1 to make it consecutive wins for the first time all season. The 1-0 win away against Melbourne Victory was their first win in Melbourne for almost a decade. That got them all the way back in the hunt... although they then lost two of their last three to fall short. Can’t blame Greenacre for missing the finals after he got them much closer than anyone expected when he inherited the team… but you also can’t give him excess praise for a record that reads: 4 wins, 1 draw, 3 losses (with 8 goals scored and 10 goals conceded). He improved them slightly. He also didn’t have to deal with any derbies. We’ll look at the Greenacre appointment in a sec but first let’s have a geeze at how the two coaches compared.
This idea gets a bit frisky because the tasks of a head coach versus an interim coach are quite different. Italiano tried to build this team towards his own ideals with all of preseason to prepare, including leading the recruitment charge, whereas Greenacre’s job was to work with what he was given for a shorter amount of time. Nevertheless, we shall try.
The fact that Greeny won four times in eight games and Chiefy only won five times in 18 games is a very significant tick in Greenacre’s favour. They scored more goals under Italiano. They conceded fewer goals under Greenacre. That all fits in with the overarching idea that Italiano’s style was ambitious yet flawed whereas Greenacre’s was pragmatic but one-dimensional. To that end, Greeny mostly eliminated the string of self-inflicted goal concessions they’d been dealing with, especially in Italiano’s latter stages (although an own goal from Tuiloma in the season closer triggered some flashbacks)... however that came at the expense of much expansiveness in possession.
Eight goals were scored under Greenacre and five of them were headers. Two were lefty strikes (Eze and Kartum) and one was an own goal off Nico Pennington’s chest (for Perth). Curiously, nobody scored with their right boot during CG’s latest interim spell. Crosses from the fullbacks and set piece deliveries were where they looked by far the most dangerous... with the exception of a couple of Luke Brooke-Smith cameos where the counter attack became a genuine weapon, most notably when LBS set up Eze for the winner against Brisbane.
That takes us to an area where Italiano was significantly better: incorporating the youngsters. It’s a key tenet for the Nix within a league that has swung heavily in favour of local development in recent years. There was hope that Greenacre – as the current Men’s Reserves Head Coach and club Head of Pro Development (not to mention NZ U20s coach) – would boost the opportunities for the young’uns late in a troubled season. It turned out to be the opposite with academy graduate minutes nearly halving after the coaching change as Greenacre kept things very conservative with his selections.
That was Greeny’s old pro pragmatism on display. For example, leaning into Josh Oluwayemi’s experience in goal instead of taking risks with Alby Kelly-Heald or Eamonn McCarron like his predecessor did. He was seeking reliability and consistency and those tend to be traits that blossom with age. For someone whose coaching career has predominantly come in the youth spaces, his coaching identity seems to be way more reminiscent of the English lower-league journeyman that he was in his playing days, after starting off at Manchester City where he and all the other youth grads had to fight over scraps for first team opportunities. In most cases, that made sense. Tim Payne is better than Xuan Loke. Bill Tuiloma is better than Jayden Smith. Ifeanyi Eze is better than Luke Supyk. But it was quite jarring to see Luke Brooke-Smith’s minutes shrink slightly under CG. He used him in every game but 5/8 appearances were for less than ten minutes. Yet when he did play he so clearly gave them an extra dimension that they were otherwise lacking.
The thing that cost LBS his prominence under Chiefy was his erratic defensive tracking and Greenacre’s more compressed shape was far more capable of absorbing that. And there’s no doubt he can contribute going forward. Luke Brooke-Smith was the only player in the squad with more than 150 minutes to have a positive on-field goal difference – the Nix scored a goal every 41 minutes while he was on the pitch. Instead Coach Greenacre repeatedly went with older dudes on expiring contracts at his expense. Greenacre’s final starting eleven, after they’d already been eliminated from finals contention, only included 5/11 players under contract for next season (and only 2/5 subs used). They lost that game 4-0 to Macarthur, by the way.
The difference between the two gaffers is best explained by the players whose minutes were most affected. Josh Oluwayemi played less than half of the action under Chief and then got every single minute under Greeny. Corban Piper played 95% of available mins for Greenacre as he nestled into a starting striker/target man/chaos bringer role alongside Ifeanyi Eze. Paolo Retre’s boost was a matter of availability, he was injured for most of Italiano’s time, though he became a key player for Greenacre as a dependable midfield soldier.
On the flipside, Carlo Italiano went from starting every single game under Italiano except for the one he was suspended for... to only playing 17 minutes combined across six matches after the formation went from wing-backs to fullbacks. Similarly, the move from three CBs to two CBs necessitated a sacrifice in the backline and it was Manjrekar James who disappeared from sight. Matt Sheridan also lost what at times had felt like a protected spot under GI, granted he at least stuck around for some tidy cameos off the bench to keep Tim Payne’s workload down.
WPX Appearance Stats For 2025-26
| Starts | Subs | Total Games | Minutes | Goals | Assists | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kazuki Nagasawa | 26 | 26 | 2204 | 3 | 4 | |
| Ifeanye Eze | 25 | 25 | 2125 | 10 | 1 | |
| Alex Rufer | 22 | 22 | 2044 | 2 | 1 | |
| Isaac Hughes | 23 | 23 | 2006 | 2 | 1 | |
| Matt Sheridan | 19 | 7 | 26 | 1833 | ||
| Ramy Najjarine | 22 | 2 | 24 | 1753 | 2 | 3 |
| Corban Piper | 15 | 11 | 26 | 1589 | 4 | 4 |
| Carlo Armiento | 19 | 3 | 22 | 1573 | 5 | 2 |
| Josh Oluwayemi | 18 | 18 | 1496 | |||
| Manjrekar James | 16 | 4 | 20 | 1464 | 2 | |
| Lukas Kelly-Heald | 13 | 10 | 23 | 1284 | ||
| Bill Tuiloma | 12 | 2 | 14 | 1073 | 1 | |
| Paulo Retre | 11 | 6 | 17 | 1044 | 1 | |
| Tim Payne | 13 | 1 | 14 | 868 | 5 | |
| Fin Roa Conchie | 8 | 6 | 14 | 535 | 1 | |
| Eamonn McCarron | 5 | 1 | 6 | 529 | ||
| Dan Edwards | 6 | 3 | 9 | 457 | ||
| Luke Brooke-Smith | 19 | 19 | 388 | 2 | ||
| Xuan Loke | 3 | 3 | 6 | 326 | ||
| Alby Kelly-Heald | 3 | 1 | 4 | 315 | ||
| Sander Kartum | 3 | 9 | 12 | 306 | 2 | |
| Hideki Ishige | 2 | 1 | 3 | 110 | ||
| Jayden Smith | 1 | 1 | 90 | |||
| Nikola Mileusnic | 7 | 7 | 86 | |||
| Sarpreet Singh | 1 | 1 | 2 | 74 | ||
| Anaru Cassidy | 2 | 2 | 64 | |||
| Gabriel Sloane-Rodrigues | 3 | 3 | 7 | |||
| Luke Supyk | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Ryan Lee | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Three Standout Players...
Ifeanyi Eze – Brilliant work up front, a real gem of a visa signing with a unique ability to turn at unexpected angles and hold the ball up top. Not much of a passer but his directness led to 10 goals and his mobility gave the Nix an outlet they could always rely upon... when in doubt, lump it up the channel and let Eze go to work. Alas, he’s just put himself in the shop window throughout Asia so it's highly unlikely he’ll be retained. A one-season wonder but that one season was wonderful.
Kazuki Nagasawa – The most underrated dude in this Nix team, used at various times as a defensive midfielder, an attacking midfielder, a winger, and a striker. Really sharp technical footballer who can play at different tempos. He was the only dude to start every game (and only twice played less than 70 mins). Five goals and seven assists in 50 appearances for the club is quite a haul for a guy who is predominantly a midfielder.
Isaac Hughes – Alex Rufer should be here but that’s too obvious and there’s more to say about Hughes after he finished the season starting ahead of Canadian international Manjrekar James. On form too, not on promise (we’ve established that Greenacre didn’t really pick on promise). Hughes was mostly great last season but spoiled things with silly mistakes that got people talking about the wrong things. Well, he eliminated those this year and has developed into one of the best tackling CBs in the competition. Plus he’s now a set piece threat going forward. Great leader as a former Nix U20s captain, fantastic attitude. Once his passing improves a bit more (which it will) he’ll be one heck of a player. Fortunately he’s currently paired with one of the very best passers from centre-back going around in Bill Tuiloma. Together they form a very physical CB duo.
Greenacre The Head Coach
Shaun Gill on hiring Chris Greenacre as head coach: “I think it was pretty clear over the games that Greenie had that he did beyond a good job. Looking at some of the data points around particularly the first seven games, you know, taking out the Macarthur game, it was two points per game on average. Goals conceded came down, shots against, a whole raft of stuff was a lot better, right? After the Melbourne Victory game, which was a big result on the road for the club, the decision was made that we wanted to keep Greeny if he was keen to carry on.”
Interesting that Gilly said there that the decision was made after the Victory win. That game was only Greeny’s fifth in charge which is a miniscule sample size for making such a critical decision... implying that they were always leaning in this direction and just waiting for enough confirming evidence. It also means they bought in at the high point since the Nix then lost 2/3 games immediately afterwards, shipping seven goals in the process. You can see where the club is coming from. They love an internal hire, with Italiano having gotten the job after serving as an assistant, while the ALW squad have done the same with Paul Temple and Natalie Lawrence in the past (and even Bev Priestman could be viewed that way given she’s married to the club’s Academy Director). But there’s a lot of hmmmmm about this appointment too.
The main counterargument is that another in-house promotion might not be what this team needs right now. Outsider voices help keep things fresh and evolving and the case could be made that the Phoenix ALM side has gotten a bit stagnant over the past two years. Gill even said that one of the main reasons they hired Greenacre is because there’s “complete alignment” between their visions for the club. Just sayin’... that’s not necessarily a good thing. Okay but what calibre of coach could they have coaxed/afforded from Australia? Probably nobody of the pedigree of Steve Corica... it may well have been that Chris Greenacre was the best candidate. But to give him the job after only five interim games without even going through an application process does not carry the pungency of ambition.
Particularly when we’ve already discussed how the style during that interim spell was pretty one-dimensional, the selections were quite conservative (to be fair, he was working with somebody else’s squad), and his ‘audition period’ didn’t include any games against Auckland FC. Nor does he have a very successful history as a coach. Albeit it’s early days for him, and the experience he’s got has all come with youth teams, but Greenacre has had four years in charge of the WeeNix Reserves in the National League and this is how they went...
2022 – 3W-3D-3L | +2 GD | 6th/10
2023 – 3W-0D-6L | -5 GD | 8th/10
2024 – 4W-1D-4L | -3 GD | 5th/10
2025 – 3W-1D-6L | -3 GD | 9th/11
Twelve months ago, that might have looked like a pretty respectable record for an U20s team competing in the country’s top men’s league. But then along came Auckland FC (yeah, those jokers again) whose Reserves finished fourth last season with a 5-3-2 record, conceding the fewest goals in the competition, claiming a higher finish and a better points-per-game rate than the WeeNix have ever accomplished in over a decade... and this at their very first attempt. They also beat the WeeNix 2-1 when they played – although Greenacre was overseas at the time for the U20 World Cup.
Greenacre has had to quit that NZ U20s role to take this one (Jose Figueira has been announced as his replacement). That closes an odd situation where the NZ U20s coaches were, for a while there, both also the Phoenix Reserves coaches. Callum Holmes on the women’s side, Chris Greenacre on the men’s side. Sorta felt like a conflict of interest but so it goes. Holmes has left the Nix to be director of football and men’s head coach at Island Bay United (and is still the Women’s NZ U20s coach) while you know what’s happened with Greenacre.
Greeny did stick around long enough to be in charge for the U20 World Cup last year... where his team were the first U20s Men’s team from Aotearoa to miss out on the knockout rounds since 2013, following four consecutive tournaments making it out of group play. They did alright in a tough group. Lost to a last-minute goal against hosts Chile, beat Egypt, then got outclassed by Japan. Unlucky to miss out as a third-placed qualifier. But we’re still talking about our worst return at the Men’s U20 WC for over a decade and it came under Greenacre’s guidance.
The stuff that keeps getting emphasised around this appointment are things like Greenacre’s love for the club, his Nice Guy image, his apprenticeship from those previous interim stints... and none of those things actually seem very relevant. Being a good interim coach doesn’t make you a good head coach. Greenacre might turn out to be both of those things but that would be what the statsfolk call: correlation not causation. They’re different jobs. Being passionate and respected and well-liked do come into the equation, absolutely they do, but you’d kinda hope anyone you hire would tick those three boxes. None of these concerns paint Chris Greenacre as a bad candidate. It’s just all rather... mediocre. Middling. Unglamorous. Perfectly okay and nothing more.
But we have seen signs, especially defensively, that Greenacre is onto something with his approach. Play hard and don’t overcomplicate things, there’s a lot to be said about that strategy. He’s constantly emphasising “pride in the badge” and if his players view him the way that his employers view him then that message is sure to get through. Not convinced there was a lack of pride under Italiano, although the percentage of minutes given to kiwi players under Chiefy did drop from 62.3% and 64.4% in his first two seasons down to 52.6% this term and perhaps that homegrown connection was starting to get frayed. That percentage dropped slightly lower under Greenacre but, again, it wasn’t his squad. Let him bring in a few more dudes to suit his vision and then we’ll see how it goes. He’s just spent the last two months assessing who’s worthy of retaining and what positions/profiles they need to target with a whole lot of room for recruitment as we prepare for an offseason of further upheaval.
Where To From Here?
This is where the rubber meets the road because the Wellington Phoenix only had a handful of first team regulars contracted to return as of Greenacre’s appointment. Things can change very quickly and it’s possible they’ve already got a few announcements in the drafts waiting to go. But as the dust settled from that heavy defeat to Macarthur this is what the situation was...
Under Contract: Tim Payne, Bill Tuiloma, Corban Piper, Isaac Hughes, Lukas Kelly-Heald, Alby Kelly-Heald, Matt Sheridan, Xuan Loke, Nathan Walker, Anaru Cassidy, Gabe Sloane-Rodrigues, Jayden Smith, Luke Brooke-Smith
Off-Contract: Kazuki Nagasawa, Paolo Retre, Alex Rufer, Manjrekar James, Nikola Mileusnic, Sander Kartum, Dan Edwards, Sarpreet Singh, Ifeanyi Eze, Carlo Armiento, Ramy Najjarine, Josh Oluwayemi, Fin Roa Conchie, Luke Supyk
Take note that the way their contracts were structured means that Loke, Walker, Sloane-Rodrigues, Smith, and Brooke-Smith all move from scholarship contracts to full contracts next season (LBS may have already done so given how much he’s played, not sure). Always possible they restructure a few of those other deals to keep them as scholars for longer... but as it stands Anaru Cassidy is the only dude on a scholarship deal next term so they’ll have several spots to fill. Goalkeeper Eamonn McCarron will surely get one of those and then it may depend on who stays and who goes from the other group. Hard to predict much based on their current Reserves group because the best players in that team are those guys listed in the first sentence of this paragraph. They haven’t really added anyone this year, only pushed a few of the U18s up a grade. Mac Munro, Jack Perniskie, Dan Nelson, and Ben Trenberth seem like fellas who could be in contention. Let’s be honest though, that’s quite a way down the list of priorities. Those are the last decisions that need to be made.
The good news is that there’s a pretty good back four already on board: Tim Payne, Bill Tuiloma, Isaac Hughes, and Lukas Kelly-Heald. All kiwis, all proven ALM performers at this stage of their career, with a good mixture of ages. The bad news is that absolutely everything else is unsettled. Even Alex Rufer, the inspirational captain, is coming out of contract and has been rumoured to be moving to a rival. The Nix conceded 9 goals in the 297 minutes that Rufer didn’t play this season – that’s 2.72 GA/90, compared to 1.72 GA/90 when he was out there. He’s not irreplaceable but bloody hell he’d leave a pretty huge hole if he leaves.
The club have already implied that Josh Oluwayemi won’t be retained. Seems a waste to use an import spot on a position of Kiwi & Aussie footballing strength so they’re going to go after a local there. Alby Kelly-Heald could be that guy, with Eamonn McCarron backing him up, or they might look elsewhere. The NZ option who ranks best on the talent/availability axis would probably be Nik Tzanev.
No surprises that Ifeanyi Eze is expected to gather offers far beyond what the Nix can match so he’ll be goneskees. Can’t see Manjrekar James or Sander Kartum sticking around, James wasn’t even playing much under Greeny while Kartum got hooked at half-time against Macarthur in a rare start (and was only on loan anyway). Kazuki Nagasawa is the sole import you’d imagine might stick around... he’ll turn 35 during the next season but he started every single game of this one so fitness ain’t an issue. If Rufer leaves, the continuity of keeping Nagasawa would be even more useful... although Greeny was playing him on the left wing at the end there so you never know.
Paolo Retre and Ramy Najjarine did enough to warrant negotiations. Carlo Armiento probably won’t pick up that phone after what happened to his minutes – there’s no place for him in a 4-4-2. Nikola Mileusnic is already out the door. The thing about the Aussie fellas is that they don’t tend to hang about for second or third contracts. Sometimes they do but if there are multiple offers then they’re almost always going to prefer the ones from other A-League clubs. It’s not like the Nix are offering finals footy right now.
That leaves Sarpreet Singh whose situation is complicated by having another year on his contract at TSC in Serbia. He’s going to continue to train with the Nix during the offseason leading up to the World Cup... whatever he does beyond that is anyone’s guess right now. Another loan isn’t out of the question but don’t get your hopes up. That leaves Dan Edwards, Fin Roa Conchie, and Luke Supyk. Edwards looked worthy of another season and would surely be agreeable to the prospect. Roa Conchie is worthy but you wouldn’t blame him if he feels it’s time to spread his wings elsewhere after not really kicking on as hoped when he was bossing it at the U20 World Cup a few years back (his case may depend on what Rufer does). As for Supyk... that’s not happening. He played one minute all season. Expect him to hit the trial circuit in the UK sometime soon. And that’s all of them. We should get some updates on this stuff next week as the Chris Greenacre Era of Wellington Phoenix football properly begins.
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