There’s something increasingly familiar about an All Whites game in which the lads play some really silky football, passing smoothly through the midfield, battling hard at the back, bringing all of the energy, only to still lose anyway
The famous line is the attack wins games but defence wins championships. The Wellington Phoenix blokes must be out there trying to win a championship because they just so happen to have the best defence in the A-League Men’s
Eight months after the World Cup, the Football Ferns are returning to Aotearoa with a pair of games against Thailand. Both games will be hosted in Christchurch, which didn’t get any World Cup matched yet after this series will have hosted as many home games as any other city over the past five years
The Woodsman’s return from injury turned out to be a timely one because as soon as he did, Nottm Forest’s other main striker Taiwo Awoniyi was immediately ruled out for what’s expected to be a number of weeks
What exactly is a W Cup, you ask? It’s not really anything. The ‘W’ stands for ‘Winsunited’ which sort of sounds like someone asked ChatGPT to design a football competition but this these are still just glorified friendlies
They said he would miss 7-8 weeks. Instead Chris Wood was back playing for Nottingham Forest within six, returning just in time to also sneak into the latest All Whites squad
Following the Wellington Phoenix’s 3-2 win over Adelaide, in which Ben Old scored twice and helped create the other goal, Nix head coach Giancarlo Italiano spoke on how the onus is on the kiwi media to build up the hype around his double goal-scorer
Lurking at the far post, poking a toe ahead of his marker, Myer Bevan made a bit of history this week. That goal was the first by a Cavalry player in the Concacaf Champions Cup and it was also just the second goal ever scored by a New Zealander in this competition
Every year the local footy swings back around way before anybody’s ready for it. 2024 has been no different, with the first competitive game of the new campaign pitting National League champions Wellington Olympic against Chatham Cup champions Christchurch United in the freshly revived Charity Cup
The MLS is underway for 2024, featuring all of your favourite players from Lionel Messi to Michael Boxall. Messi scored a brilliant late equaliser for Inter Miami but, far more importantly. Minnesota United got going with a 2-1 win away to Austin FC
If you managed to stay up until 2am NZT watching the Wellington Phoenix lads draw nil-all away to Perth Glory then congratulations, you’ve unlocked the Hearty Fan badge
The Football Ferns are going to the Olympics. As expected, they burst through the Oceania qualifying tournament winning every game and scoring a bunch of goals. They got progressively more efficient from game to game
On the brink of the new League of Ireland season came an unexpected, but understandable, bit of breaking news: Max Mata was loaned back to Sligo Rovers
We knew that the Wellington Phoenix lads were going to lean heavily on their academy players this season. We knew that because they told us they would. It wasn’t a secret. It was spoken loud and proud.
For the first time since December, Empoli are out of the relegation zone. They’ve been experiencing a funky uptick of results since Davide Nicola took over as manager, with the latest being a 3-1 win over last-placed Salernitana
Happy days as CJ Bott retuned to the starting line-up for Leicester City this week. Her first start since December, when she’d gotten injured early in a 2-2 draw against Brighton
There are few aspects of the New Zealand football experience more unique than going to Samoa, winning a few double-digit victories, and thus qualifying for a major tournament that only 12 nations on the planet get to participate in
All of that considered, it was time to throw Meikayla Moore back into the starting eleven. That’s exactly what happened, and what’s more it took a mere 15 seconds for that decision to pay dividends. Fifteen seconds.
Let us begin at the top of the table where Melbourne City are being boosted by pair of Football Ferns icons who share a couple hundred caps between them. Rebekah Stott also happens to be an A-League legend having played more than a century of games and won four championships
Managerial changes happen all the time in the ruthless world of professional football. The average job-span of a Premier League manager is roughly two years and that’s clearly skewed by the few successful fellas at the top of the ladder