The future of New Zealand football and an ambitious plan to host the World Cup

The New Zealand team Auckland City began the Club World Cup as the tournaments fall guys, losing 10-0 against the German champions Bayern Munich, but by the end of the group stage, the semi-professional outfit earned respect by holding Boca Juniors to a draw.

They did so with their 20-year-old goalkeeper Nathan Garrow, who is a full-time student back home in New Zealand, and their goalscorer Christian Gray, a trainee teacher who said his assignments are piling up in his day job.

Advertisement It was a fantastic result and testimony to Auckland Citys resilience, Andrew Pragnell, the chief executive of New Zealands football federation, tells The Athletic.

We are enormously proud.

Weve got students, teachers, all sorts of people doing jobs back here in New Zealand playing against a South American powerhouse.

Its what we love about football.

It can be a great leveller.

It has been reported as a huge headline across New Zealand.

Everyone was across the Bayern result .

It would have been easy to have your morale dashed but it did the opposite to this team.

They turned around and got tougher.

This is a Kiwi trait.

When times are tough, we dig deep.

Bayern are a multi-billion dollar club and we know the value of those players, so some people would say 10-0 was the expected result but no one would have predicted the draw for an amateur team against Boca Juniors .

The team can hold their heads high representing the country.

Id hope that the keeper is on the scouting list for a few player agents who watched him in the last couple of games he is a young lad and showed plenty of potential.

While the Auckland City story turned heads, they do not offer a complete picture of the progress being made within football in New Zealand or the broader ambitions for the nation over the coming decades.

In sport, New Zealand is most famous for the rugby union All Blacks while they also ranked 11th in the overall medals table (including 10 gold medals) at the Paris Olympics last summer, with golds across canoeing, cycling, rowing, athletics, golf and rugby sevens.

Football, however, is now the biggest participation sport in the country.

In figures reported by the New Zealand Herald , rugby in New Zealand had 155,568 registered players in 2024 but football is up to over 170,000, factoring in those who also play futsal.

Advertisement Pragnell says the challenge is to sustain that growth by ensuring there are a sufficient numbers of volunteers, coaches and facilities to meet the demand.

Locally, Pragnell says parents have noted the physical impact of rugby on the body, with ever more education about the threat of concussion, while footballs accessibility also helps.

Theres also the impact of the global game, he continues.

When I was a kid, you got little clips of the Premier League, almost in black and white, but you couldnt follow the game.

These days, kids get everything on social media.

These clubs have huge marketing budgets and appeal, and we see some of our young kids putting on football tops rather than All Blacks tops.

There is collaboration with the All Blacks, including exchanges with coaches and performance experts.

They have done great things in terms of environment and standards, and the reason theyve been world champions is because theyre able to instil a powerful culture, so there are shared learnings.

In 2023, New Zealand co-hosted the Womens World Cup with Australia and 42,137 fans watched New Zealand defeat Norway in their opening match at Eden Park, while similar numbers turned out to watch the US.

womens national team play Vietn am and Portugal in the group stages.

Crowds of over 43,000 attended games held at Eden Park in the round of 16, the quarter-final and the semi-final.

The mens team has already qualified for the World Cup in 2026, meaning a third appearance at a mens World Cup for a nation of just over five million people.

They are yet to win a game at the competition but in 2010, they drew all three matches of the group stages meaning they were the only unbeaten team at the tournament but they did not qualify for the knockout stages.

Their most famous name is 33-year-old forward Chris Wood, who hit 20 Premier League goals for Nottingham Forest last season, and Forest have two other New Zealand national team players on their books in Marko Stamenic and Tylwr Bindon, who spent 2024-25 loaned out to Olympiacos and Reading respsectively.

Others are now playing in Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and in MLS.

Advertisement Signs of progress were underlined by this months friendly win over Ivory Coast, the reigning AFCON champions, while they also drew with the USMNT last year.

New Zealand are ranked 86th in the world by FIFA, between Bulgaria and Angola, while the women are ranked 33rd, between Argentina and Serbia.

Pragnell has also registered New Zealands interest in being a co-host for the mens World Cup in 2038.

The locations for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups are already locked in, and FIFAs unusual choices for those two tournaments has opened the door.

Under FIFAs confederation rotation principle, two tournaments need to pass by before a single confederation is able to host a World Cup again.

In 2030, three confederations are hosting the World Cup because FIFA has split the tournament between South America, Africa and Europe, playing games in Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Morocco, Spain and Portugal.

Then, in 2034, the Asian confederation has the tournament in Saudi Arabia.

This rules out those four confederations, which leaves only Concacaf and Oceania as potential destinations for 2038.

Unless FIFA alter their policies, New Zealand would not be able to partner with Australia, because the Australian federation is part of the Asian confederation, which is why Pragnell is open to partnering with the United States in a trans-pacific tournament that, hypothetically, could also involve Hawaii and Fiji if stadium plans come to fruition by then.

Prganell says New Zealand have the stadium capacity to host some group games and early knockout games meaning partnership is key.

You could argue we could partner with anyone based on the 2030 model, he says.

But geographically, New Zealand looks two ways frequently in economic discussions either as part of Asia or part of the wider Asia-Pacific region, so you look across to the west coast of the Americas.

Advertisement He added: Everyone wants something different.

The idea may be that were gonna look at this ocean, the Pacific, and that we could host it across that.

The Paris Olympics (in 2024) held the surfing in Tahiti, right? People want different things.

They are looking for a different experience and the idea of holding this across the ocean (appeals).

As for the club game, Auckland City are unlikely to be seen again at the Club World Cup because Oceania is changing its formula for teams to qualify for the next edition.

They qualified for this tournament because they have won the past four Oceania Champions League trophies but the best teams in New Zealand do not play in that tournament.

Wellington Phoenix and Auckland FC (a different team to Auckland City) are professional sides who compete in the Australian A-League, but the Australian teams fall under the Asian confederation.

Oceanias new system will see the launch of the Oceania Pro League in 2026 and both Wellington and Auckland FC but not Auckland City have registered their interest in competing in the competition.

Pragnell says: Auckland City have opted to not pursue that, so theyre not currently in the mix.

Oceania Football are going through the assessment phase and theyre due to make a decision around September this year as to how many clubs from each country and region will be represented.

It will ensure theres a professional competition for the whole region beyond the A-League and whoevers competing in that will then be competing in future editions of the Club World Cup.

Oceania have put it out there that theyre interested in having an Australian club in this Pro League, as it might open up some commercial interest in the league, bu t what they have been very clear about is that an Australian Club could not use the Pro League as a pathway to the Club World Cup.

Those spots available for future Club World Cups are reserved for Oceania teams.

Advertisement Auckland FC are owned by the billionaire Bill Foley , who also owns Premier League club AFC Bournemouth, French Ligue 1 side Lorient and Scottish Premier League team Hibernian.

In the U.S., he is best known as the man who had the idea to launch a NHL team the Vegas Golden Knights in the Nevada desert.

Auckland FC, founded only in 2024, averaged just over 18,000 per game in their first season: higher than any other team in the A-League.

Their ownership, which partnered with Hollywood actor Michael B.

Jordan as well as former All Black Ali Williams, AllBirds footwear billionaire Tim Brown and ex-NBA centre Steven Adams, makes it likely that we will see them sooner rather than later at a Club World Cup.

Elsewhere in the capital, Auckland City FC players return home, back into their day jobs after requesting annual leave to fulfil their semi-professional obligations as footballers.

According to Opta Sports power rankings , they are the 4,715th best team in the world and Boca Juniors are ranked 131st, underlining the achievement.

Auckland FC are ranked 740th, which highlights how we saw the best of New Zealand spirit but not necessarily quality during this tournament.

Within the Club World Cup, the next-lowest ranked team after Auckland City are Al-Ain of the UAE, and they are 637th.

Auckland City earned $3.58m USD for their participation in the tournament, in addition to a $1m bonus from FIFA for the draw against Boca.

Just under $1m of this is immediately taken out by the costs of the competition, as FIFA cover lodging but not travel or pre-tournament camps.

Pragnell also points out that tax may be pretty hefty, with obligations in both New Zealand and the United States accounting for around 35 per cent of the earnings, while there may be some individual taxes to consider too.

Advertisement There has been some tensions over the earnings but what remains is likely to be divided between players, coaches, local community projects and the federation to redistribute towards the development of football in New Zealand.

The nation will be hoping the best is yet to come.

(Top photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.