All Whites side likely to lack experience
The All Whites team to be named today will surely be the most inexperienced team in New Zealand Football history.
The absence of many established players — and the emphasis on the 2020 Olympics in Japan — has led coach Fritz Schmid to name a team almost unrecognisable from what was seen in the last cycle.
The Herald understands there will be only three players (Clayton Lewis, Max Crocombe and Dane Ingham) who were part of 23-man squad for the Intercontinental playoff with Peru last November, and only one that saw any game time (Lewis).
More than a quarter of the squad for next month’s four nation tournament in India will be international rookies.
Of the big name players some are taking time off and others are injured, while the United States-based contingent will stay with their clubs.
Chris Wood will take a break after his Burnley exploits, while Winston Reid and Ryan Thomas are injured. Senior players Marco Rojas, Michael McGlinchey, Tommy Smith and Themi Tzimopoulos will also miss the tournament, which involves Chinese Taipei, Kenya and the host nation.
It also believed Kosta Barbarouses and Jeremy Brockie will also miss the trip.
The rest of New Zealand’s Major League Soccer contingent — including Deklan Wynne, Kip Colvey and Bill Tuiloma — will also be absent, while Stefan Marinovic is out with injury.
Phoenix defender Liberato Cacace will be named, completing a fairy tale rise for the teenager, who made his A-League debut in February.
Another new face — and bolt from the blue — will be Noah Billingsley. He wasn’t called up in the previous cycle, even though former coach Anthony Hudson cast the net far and wide.
The 20-year-old has been at University of California in Santa Barbara since 2015, the alma mater of Tony Lochhead and Michael Boxall.
There will be a large contingent of Phoenix players, with Alex Rufer, Cacace, Tom Doyle and Sarpreet Singh, as well as recently departed midfielder Matt Ridenton. However, Monty Patterson has been overlooked.
Niko Kirwan, who was in the squad for March, hasn’t made the cut this time, while Henry Cameron, who tore his ACL on his All Whites debut in 2015, is set to return to the fold.
It’s expected to be a squad heavy on Britain-based players, with up to seven from the United Kingdom.
The goalkeeping situation is intriguing, with Nik Tzanev, Max Crocombe and Michael Woud expected to be named again, after being called up in March. Tzanev played two games at the 2015 Under20 World Cup — against Myanmar and Portugal — then went off the radar for a while, before getting a deal at Wimbledon in League One in May last year, where he has been playing youth team football.