Injury to duo leaves All Whites singing from a familiar song sheet
The good news about the bad news around the All Whites’ World Cup playoff squad announcement is that it wasn’t a massive shock.
Sarpreet Singh won’t be there when they play Costa Rica in Qatar on June 15 (NZ time) for the final place in the 32-team event, to be held in the same country in November.
When the Bayern Munich player said last week that he had ‘‘a long way to go’’ before he would be ready to play and that he wouldn’t ‘‘want to take a risk,’’ the writing was on the wall.
His experience over the last five months with osteitis pubis – inflammation of the pubic bone – sounds harrowing.
He only needs to look at fellow All Whites midfielder Ryan Thomas, who was ruled out of the playoff last month, as a cautionary tale.
Their injuries are different, of course, but it’s been devastating watching as a series of setbacks have kept Thomas from being the player he could be at PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
Since the last World Cup in 2018, he’s played less football in total than he would have hoped to play in a single season.
After Danny Hay’s first match in charge, a 3-1 loss to the Republic of Ireland in Dublin in November 2019, he thought Thomas was the best player involved, from both teams. But he hasn’t had the chance to work with him since.
Singh played against Ireland and in the second match on that tour, a 1-0 loss to Lithuania.
But he’s only appeared in two of the nine fixtures since then, as well as missing the Tokyo Olympics last winter to focus on starting strong on loan at Jahn Regensburg, during his third season in Germany. And that is why the pair’s absences aren’t as big a blow as they could have been.
The All Whites have become used to operating without them and having them ruled out well in advance will mean there are no distractions from any sort of willthey, won’t-they scenario.
Hay and his staff would have anticipated being in this situation since they won the Oceania qualifying tournament in March.
They will also be hoping the injured list doesn’t grow beyond two, where it stands at present, because there are some players – most notably the spine of Winston Reid, Joe Bell, and Chris Wood – they probably can’t afford to lose.
None of that is to say the All Whites’ chances of qualifying haven’t lessened, especially now that all hope has faded for Singh, who was the more likely to feature out of him and Thomas.
His ability to create something
out of nothing – whether for someone else or himself – is unmatched among the current crop of New Zealand men’s players and without him they will be slightly bigger underdogs than before.
In his last appearance for the All Whites, in a 3-1 loss to Jordan at the end of January, Singh was in the early stages of realising the extent of his injury and wasn’t at his best.
But in the one before that, he was the key creative force in a 2-1 win over Curac¸ ao, even if he didn’t contribute an assist or a goal.
It was an all-too-brief glimpse of what he had to offer, and hopefully it won’t be too long before we get to see him in a white (or black) shirt again. The same goes for Thomas.
In the meantime, those who did make the squad will be busy making their way to Marbella on Spain’s south coast, where they will set up camp next week, ahead of a friendly with Peru on Queen’s Birthday.
Costa Rica are heading into camp now too, with their domestic league, which provides the bulk of their squad, being put on pause for a month after this weekend.
A big month lies ahead.