With the All Whites at the 1999 Confederations Cup in Mexico

Sitter! Fanzine #37 (August 1999)

I’ve been seduced by the All Whites.

I’ve returned from Guadulajara and found myself studiously avoiding addressing the question most people are asking: How good is/was this New Zealand team?

Every time somebody put the question, I would inadvertently drift into talk about how the tournament was the experience of a lifetime, and bone on about the pride and sense of achievement I felt in watching the All Whites in Mexico.

Which is all very nice, but barely answers the question, and is hardly good enough for an opinionated fanzine editor.

I’ve found myself persistently procrastinating when it comes to seriously analysing the merits of our three-loss Mexico jaunt (1-2 v USA, 0-2 v Germany, 0-2 v Brazil).

Whenever I sit down and attempt a cold-hearted, dispassionate retrospective look at the All Whites strengths and weaknesses I get sidetracked.

I start thinking about the loud, passionate, convivial, boozy, carefree good times on the terraces at Jalisco Stadium. I day-dream about what might have happened if Buncey’s header had gone in. I ruminate on how we lacked that “slice of luck” all tournament. I ponder on how fans are much the same the world over.

Those who watched at home on television may be better equipped to give a more objective assessment. By contrast, my own views have to be untangled from a Gordian knot of personal experiences.

But for what it is worth, here are some well-overdue and totally subjective thoughts from somebody who went to Mexico as a sceptic and returned a believer...

The night we took on Brazil

My favourite memory from the Confederations Cup came the night the All Whites played Brazil.

Lanky Che Bunce trotted upfield for a first-half corner. Mid-stride he turned to the vast tiered stand to his left and started passionately pumping his arms at the crowd, urging them to get behind the team.

Harry Ngata, another having his first trot of the campaign, did likewise.

The response was humbling. Next thing a raucous cacophony erupted at Jalisco Stadium, with tens of thousands of Mexicans and the odd New Zealander — cheering the Kiwis.

It was too spontaneous and ill co-ordinated to come across as anything but an aural equivalent of a Mexican wave.

But it was a nodal point for the All Whites and their supporters. New Zealand football was important again. For the first time since Scottish fans implored us to nick a point off the USSR in Spain in 1982, fans from another country adopted us.

In effect the All Whites had appealed for a huge and knowledgeable crowd to recognise a gutsy performance in a David-and-Goliath contest — the world’s greatest football power against one of the world’s tiniest — and fans who had attended en masse to worship the Brazilians as their own, duly acknowledged they were witnessing the prospect of a major upset.

Suddenly the “ole’s” were for the Kiwis, the boos for the Brazilians. We’d been holding a Brazilian side which had already beaten Germany and USA, to a scoreless draw, and looked quite capable of doing so for the rest of the match.

We had captured the hearts of Guadulajara, historically the second home of Brazil. This so confounded the Mexican media that a television documentary crew hunted out our small pocket of All Whites fans in Zona A, Row 1, for our explanation of what was happening.

Had the whole of Guadalajara gone mad? A team which had arrived in Mexico as the runt of the lifter was now being frantically urged to cause the upset of the year.

Sure, we finally lost, but we had the consolation of knowing it took two amazing goals to sink us.

I have no other emotional reference point in soccer to compare with the mood of exuberance-in-defeat we oozed as we bussed back to the team’s Hilton hotel.

This was a totally bizarre public bus trip in which we revelled in being the toast of Football-town — yet came up short in trying to express ourselves in cultural terms.

The songs we sang on the bus amused the locals but reflected our ditty-less indigenous soccer culture.

Out team may have done the haka, but we were reduced to singing You’ll Never Walk Alone, Ten Guitars (cringe), and, even more inexplicably, It’s A Long Way To Tipperrary (we didn’t even give it the Rangiriri variation).

As a judge might have said: “drunkenness cannot excuse this type of behaviour”.

A sport of fine margins

The record books will show three losses and just one goal to the All Whiles’ credit in Mexico, while there will be lingering doubts about the pedigree of the tournament with many of the world’s best countries effectively snubbing it.

But the Confederations Cup was more important to New Zealand than any other country.

Most of the football world had little enthusiasm for this tournament, as was shown by the endless saga of postponements, withdrawals, and second-string bums sent.

France couldn’t be stuffed, Germany fielded their worst team since Hitler was in charge, and of the Brazilians who played New Zealand only Dida, Flavio Conceicao and Christian were first-choice starters in the Copa America. (We foolishly tried to ape this trend by leaving out Danny Hay).

In short, a tournament formed eight years ago on the whim of a Saudi oil tycoon still has a long way to go before it meets in practice the lofty status Fifa has accorded it by declaring it is second only to the World Cup in importance.

But consider it from a Kiwi perspective. The tournament was a godsend for a country where the game is weak financially, structurally, administratively, and struggles to attract public or media interest. (Try explaining to overseas fans we don’t even have a national league, let alone a professional league, and it really puts our efforts in context.)

Discounting those dreadful opening 20 minutes against USA, our performances were creditable — and reassuring for those of us stung by warm-up tour losses to the likes of Malaysia and Oman.

Yes, we made our expected early exit, and our world ranking at the end of a six- week tour was only marginally better than when we left home (101 v 107).

But football is a sport of very fine margins, especially at international level. A 1-0 win can hide a multitude of faults while a 0-1 loss can sometimes tell a blatant lie.

In assessing the merits of a team you sometimes need to go beyond the scoreboard and break down a performance into details like meaningful attacks on goal, or ability to retain possession. Or even subjective factors like refereeing decisions (for those convinced Lines should have had a penalty).

What mattered was our team played very close to its optimum potential, and proved resilient opponents. Nobody tanked us 8-2 or 6-1, and you didn’t see the All Whites having three players sent off.

In the first half against Brazil, we restricted them to two scoring chances. (For those who labour the point it was a Brazilian B team. USA coach Bruce Arena summed it up when he suggested a Brazilian C team would still be in the world’s top 10.)

And we were very much the “away” team. All our tour matches were in alien conditions, even allowing for the cosmopolitan make-up of the New Zealand squad.

There is another comparison which should be made here. Including the warm-up tour, the All Whites have played 26 A internationals since 1997, most of those against Oceania countries, and only four against those from the world’s top 30. By contrast Germany played 32 matches, Brazil 63, USA 40, and Mexico a staggering 61.

Out of the shadow of ‘82

My view is the All Whites have finally moved out of the shadow of the World Cup qualifying Class of ‘82.

The Mexican Confederations Cup adventure does not deserve to be considered an equal achievement to reaching the finals in Spain, and we still do not have strikers to match the finishing ability of Steve Wooddin and Wynton Rufer.

But our style of play at Mexico was far more mature. We were able to keep the ball for extended periods and for the most part looked relaxed in doing so. That’s an advance from the long-ball game of 1981-82.

We are nowhere near being world-beaters, however we will be tough to break down. We have a competitive team built around an ethos of old-fashioned Kiwi graft and embryonic signs of flair.

It is going to be very hard to take the next step and actually win a few of these type of games, because the “inventiveness” quotient’ in midfield is still on the low side.

But compared to our World Cup campaign in 1997, and our outings at Mt Smart last year, Mexico represented a qualitative leap forward.

A less-discussed outcome of the tournament for New Zealand football which we should also consider is not so much how it changed and developed the team, but what it did to us as fans.

Personally, the Jalisco experience freed me of any lingering inhibitions as an All Whites’ supporter. From those around me I could see other supporters also forego their usual self-consciousness.

This was, for want of a better term, our Mexican waiver. We put our doubts behind us and backed our team as ¡f we were Brazilians.

Growing your own

Perversely, amid all this fandom renaissance ¡t almost escaped our attention that once Tinoi Christie was dropped, for the first time in living memory we had an all New Zealand-born All Whites squad.

I’ve been chewing over how significant this is. During my boyhood (I’m a 40-something teenager) invariably my football heroes here in New Zealand were born in Manchester, Liverpool, or Glasgow.

I didn’t like them any less because of it. They belonged to “us” because they chose to live in our communities, and they provided an injection of talent into the game here we badly needed. It mattered little that they spoke with an accent from a Clyde shipyard.

So initially it seemed a little artificial to draw such a line of demarcation. But the importance of homegrown players was best explained by Alex Ferguson in a recent edition of The Technician, the quarterly bulletin of the Uefa Technical Department.

Asked why he worked so hard at rearing his own players in an era when it was the fashion for top clubs to buy in top players, he said: “I believe we must produce our own players because they produce the heart and spirit of United — these homegrown talents give us our identity.”

The same holds true of the All Whites. It’s an important social dimension of our national side. Our “identity” comes from people not necessarily born here, or even still living here, but from those who have come through our football structures (even if they have succeeded in spite of them, rather than because of them).

Beyond birthplace, there is an even wider challenge to define the nature of our All Whites team in the context of such a global sport. Every country plays football, so what makes us Kiwis different? What identifies us?

As a bare minimum I would suggest the need to recognise ourselves as a football “nation”. Which immediately raises the propsect of another dividing line within the All Whites — those that play domestically, and those who don’t.

We set a Confederations Cup record in fielding a squad with players from nine different countries in it. Of the New Zealand-based players only Jackson was a first-choice in every match, (though Vicelich should have been) and Ngata was well worthy of his start against Brazil. Urlovic and Nicholson never got a trot at all, while — Perry, and Elrick were bit-part substitutes.

So overall the players we could identify with as being from our home league — the ones we could take little Johnny along to look at in domestic matches — were extremely limited. We are left with only the most tenuous link between our flagship leagues, and our national team.

Around provincial New Zealand there will be few “boyhood heroes” numbering in the All Whites, which is sad. What it says about the traditionally unquestioned mantra of a national league being essential to our development I’m not sure. But here we are, over a year without a national league and on a post-82 high, so should we even be brooding over such questions?

More to the point, where do we go from here? The average age of the All Whites is 25 years 11 months. That means, form permitting, the nucleus of them should be around for a few years yet.

Of course, the problem is whether we will be able to afford to bring them together often enough, given the tendency for our home international to run at a loss, to capitalise on the “high” and build a following.

Bringing a squad together from New Zealand, Iceland, England, Australia, US, Germany, Singapore, Belgium, and South Africa is fraught with difficulties.

We need to though, because we are on the verge of building something really good here.

However I find it a teeny weeny bit concerning that moves are afoot to bring a UK club side to New Zealand. Playing clubs on junket tours will do nothing to lift our world standing. What we need are a string of A internationals against higher-ranked teams.

If we are to go to the expense of bringing back our top players, let’s do it against teams that can at least give us the chance of catapulting our ranking higher.

Life on the sidelines

Jalisco Stadium, which holds about 70,000, was a colossus. From the back of the top tier, where the press were located, it was like watching two teams of ants. On the bottom tier, the raucous din from above set the atmosphere.

But in many respects it was no different to the likes of Eden Park when it comes to hypocrisy from the authorities. Fans were prevented from taking plastic bottles of water through the gate, but were welcome to buy the very same brands inside at highly inflated prices.

Ditto for beer, which was served non-stop by wandering sellers.

In the press section media were invited to take in as much beer, water or Coke as they liked.

A cross section of metropolitan, state and federal police patrolled matches, most placed on the touchline, facing the crowd ominously with long batons, riot shields, and occasionally, guns.

But there was never any hint of a problem. Whether this was because of their presence or in spite of it, was unclear, though the locals all gave them the “Sieg heil” treatment.

I was amazed by the spirit on the terraces. Crowd segregation obviously hadn’t been an issue in distributing the tickets, because within a 7m radius we were surrounded by fans of all competing teams plus a swag of Mexicans.

In the editorial of the last issue (36) I moaned about how we had been stuffed around by NZ Soccer over ticket arrangements.

Turns out they did us a favour. We got a far greater feel for the tournament — and for global sense of fan community — than if we had been compartmentalised in a sterile “Kiwis only” block.

Having isolated pockets of New Zealand support also worked wonders in assisting the team’s initiative in gaining the locals’ backing. Having “frontier outposts” dotted around the vast stadium helped convert the masses.

By contrast the Yanks were heartily booed throughout, though it must be said this has more to do with politics than sport, Mexico having historically suffered economically and socially at the hands of the superpower on its northern border.

Un autentico golazo

Michael Utting was my player of the tournament, and Ryan Nelsen was easily the “find” of the tour, though his emergence gave us an overdose of possible right backs — Nelsen, Zorocich, Bunce, Perry and Wilkinson were all possibilities.

The only player who disappointed me was Vaughan Coveny. He was our most experienced All White, but often seemed clumsy and sadly out of synch with the rest of the team. (Yes I know he can run fast, but so can Forrest Gump.)

Statto freaks should note Zoricich’s goal (v USA) was the seventh in the history of the Confederations Cup to be scored in the 90th minute or later. El Informador described the goal as “un autentico golazo”. Apparently media praise doesn’t come any higher than that ¡n Guadulajara.

It was named “goal of the day” on Mexican television, where Jackson also earned us “bad tackle of the day”.

If we’re handing out gongs, we must acknowledge the superb job done by the All Whites management.

The New Zealand party were tremendous ambassadors and showed more community spirit than could reasonably be expected.

Though often under pressure, manager Dave Wilson ¡s one of life’s achievers, and had an admirable sense of occasion.

The All Whites party broke all the Fifa, and Guadulajara Hilton rules by inviting travelling Kiwi supporters to a free-booze party at their hotel after the Brazil match.

To a certain extent this was possible because our support base was so meagre. All the same, it’s hard to imagine anyone else from the All Blacks to the stony-faced Brazilians extending a similar welcome to their fans. In the circumstances it seemed quintessentially Kiwi, made more so when quintessential Kiwi Sitter! Subscriber Kevin Hart responded with a brief thank you speech in the Hilton banquet room.

Credit also to Ken Dugdale. He seemed to take everything in his stride. He had the best line at the post-match media scrums, when after the loss to Germany, he was asked by the official Fifa questioner to comment on how good the Brazilian team was.

“Que esta Brazil?” was the reply. Ole.

Dugdale also fielded a snorter from the same smarmy bloke. The question went something along the lines of: “Ken, you came into coaching after you were banned following an incident with a referee. Given the importance of fair play in the game today, can you explain what happened, and whether indiscipline is an ongoing problem in the New Zealand camp, given that you suspended your goalkeeper from today’s match for breaking a team curfew.”

Dugdale ignored the first half of the question, giving a cursory explanation of how the team had set the curfew conditions. Ole again.

All White lineups:

v USA:  Michael Utting, Chris Zoricich [c], Sean Douglas (Scott Smith 72'), Gavin Wilkinson, Mark Burton, Aaron Lines, Chris Jackson, Mark Atkinson (Ryan  Nelsen 57'), Kris Bouckenooghe, Ivan Vicelich, Vaughan Coveny (Mark Elrick 63').

v Germany:  Jason Batty, Chris Zoricich [c] (Jonathan Perry 78'), Sean Douglas, Gavin  Wilkinson, Mark Burton (Mark Elrick 78'), Aaron Lines, Chris Jackson (Vaughan  Coveny 62'), Mark Atkinson, Kris Bouckenooghe, Ryan Nelsen, Ivan Vicelich.

v Brazil: Michael Utting, Chris Zoricich [c], Sean Douglas, Che Bunce (Ivan Vicelich 82'), Mark Burton, Aaron Lines, Chris Jackson (Jonathan Perry 85'), Heremaia Ngata (Vaughan Coveny 66'), Mark Atkinson, Kris Bouckenooghe, Ryan Nelsen.

Mexican Wave -  by All White Sean (Roly) Douglas

Ole... Ole... Ole... Ole... the sound still rings in my head.

A Mexican crowd of around 50,000 is cheering our every pass (against Brazil). What a way to end a fantastic tournament. Playing the best team in the world in front of 50,000 screaming football fans.

It’s every players dream. It was my dream come true. And to be able to hold our heads high after winning the respect of every one watching was the icing on the cake.

But wait, there was more to come — an impromptu haka which sent the fans wild, and a lap of honour. We felt like we had won the tournament, not just bowed out without a point.

It didn’t matter what the result was in that last game, we had won the hearts of the Mexican public with our effort and openness.

Headlines in the local papers stated: “Kiwi’s know how to enjoy themselves!” with accompanying photo’s of Vaughan Coveny on a motorbike, and Harry Ngata relieving himself behind tree at the training ground.

Some would call this unprofessional behaviour, but it’s the sort of behaviour that made us the crowd’s sentimental favourite.

Combined with our constant photos and autographs for children, and our visit to the cancer hospital and orphans home, we were the most open team.

As for our three matches, I don’t think we really got used to the level of football until the final game.

The first 20 minutes against the US was well below what we would have liked and could be put down to the cauldron-like atmosphere in the Jalisco Stadium.

But we recovered well enough to force a couple of chances and get the crowd cheering. Zoro’s goal in the dying minutes was just reward and one to be replayed over and over on the video back home.

The German game was like playing a methodical machine. I didn’t rate their players at all, except for one – Lothar Matthaus. He may be old, but he is still a different class.

The Germans’ second goal was all down to his skill. I felt like I’d be tied in knots, twisting and turning, running back to try and stop him. He just waltzed through and slotted the ball home calm as you like. World Class.

But, again we fought back, and although we didn’t create many chances, we pinned the Germans in their own half — not a bad achievement for the 102nd ranked team in the world.

It was so good to play this tournament in a football mad country. We became instant superstars even though the young kids had never heard of us before.

A lot of players actually commented that though it was good to be so famous — they wouldn’t want to live like superstars for the rest of their lives.

One two hour shopping trip turned into a one and a half hour autograph session and 30 mins of shopping.

Constant security, including four police cars and three bikes to every training session, meant we were restricted to our hotel for most of our time in Mexico.

But the boys loved every minute of it, and wouldn’t swap it for the world.

So what were my feelings after a tour that nearly lasted two months? Well I was glad to get home, that’s for sure! But I just can’t find the words to describe how lucky I feel at being a part of it.

From the pride I felt at hearing our national anthem being played before the first match (and the tears it put in my eyes) to the final lap of honour -  well, I’m speechless.

But you can count on the fact that I’ll be talking about it for the rest of my life!