One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Can New Zealand manage a real victory, rather than a moral one, in their return to the World Cup?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group G preview. You can also read previews of Iran, Egypt, and Belgium.
Can New Zealand manage a real victory, rather than a moral one, in their return to the World Cup?
Here’s a nice piece of World Cup symmetry: In 2010, Chris Wood was a scrappy teenage forward on a New Zealand squad making their first appearance at the World Cup in a generation.
Sixteen years later, New Zealand are again making their first appearance at the World Cup in a generation. Starting up front will be Chris Wood, now a grizzled veteran of over a decade of center forward trench warfare in the lower reaches of the English Premier League.
Chris Wood barely played in his first World Cup. In his second, he’ll be the focal point of the squad.
For all the focus on how the expansion of the World Cup has opened up opportunities for potentially mediocre teams out of Asia or North America to qualify, New Zealand are probably the biggest beneficiaries of the tournament moving to 48 teams.
In the 32-team format, the Oceania Football Confederation was given 0.5 places at every World Cup, meaning that the region could only guarantee a spot in the intercontinental playoffs. Every cycle, New Zealand’s reward for emerging victorious from the grueling travel of the island-hopping qualification process across the various Pacific island nations that make up the OFC was yet another tournament, usually against competent teams from the Americas.
This last hurdle was frequently one challenge too many, hence why that 2010 tournament was followed by three consecutive missed tournaments. But in bulking the World Cup to 48 teams, FIFA provided Oceania with a precious, single guaranteed slot at the tournament. This summer is likely the start of a new age of New Zealand football, one in which they are almost always at the World Cup.
The last New Zealand team to qualify for the tournament lives large in the memory of the World Cup in the 21st century, or at the very least larger than most teams that are eliminated in the group stage. The Kiwis went undefeated across their three matches, a feat that is even more enshrined as an immortal piece of trivia because the eventual winners Spain stumbled in their opening match. That opening loss by the Spanish made New Zealand the only undefeated team at the tournament, despite the fact they were eliminated before the round of 16.
That was a great tournament and New Zealand could leave South Africa with their heads held high, particularly after they held on for a gloriously white knuckled draw against Italy, the reigning champions.
That was a great moral victory. But in his long-delayed return to the World Cup, Chris Wood will want to get a real one, which would be his nation’s first-ever win at the tournament.
His team will have to work hard to get it. The New Zealand squad is composed of a mix of solid pros from leagues just below the top levels of Europe; mostly the Australian A-League, and the English Championship, along with a few representatives of Scandinavian Leagues or the French second tier. The roster is full of players who play good football for good teams, but who don’t regularly compete with the best in the world.
A lot, then, will be riding on Chris Wood’s shoulders. And to be fair to Wood, this is the kind of situation he has found himself in before. With the exception of one season in which Nottingham Forest shot up the table, Wood has made his career as a combative aerial threat for unfashionable teams in England.
After bouncing between no less than nine different teams around the English league pyramid through the first half of the 2010s, Wood developed a name for himself in the top flight with Burnley, a team notorious for playing a sort of direct, agricultural football. Wood was asked mostly to win the ball in the air, hold the ball up for his team, scrap in the penalty box to try to score goals, and — failing any of those three options — put the fear of God into opposing centerbacks.
But lest you get the impression that Chris Wood is merely a hatchet man in shinguards, he also can play some football. He has kept his career going at the highest level well into his thirties because in addition to excelling at the dirty work, he is a real footballer. He moves well off the ball and has decent touch and good array of finishes with both feet.
Chris Wood is a player well-suited to underdog soccer. And that’s what New Zealand will likely be playing for long stretches this World Cup, likely against Egypt and Iran and certainly against Belgium.
But in Wood, they have a focal point and an outlet. More importantly, they have a player who has made a career by helping a team steal a goal or two against a team that has more talent on paper, either by pouncing on an opportunity himself or by disrupting the backline to create an opportunity for his teammates.
For New Zealand to get that long-delayed first win, Wood will need to pull deep into his bag of tricks. If he can perform at his best, they might be able to have a World Cup that is more than a fun piece of trivia.
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