The Oceania World Preliminary Round this morning was held in the continental semi-finals, and the result of the match was no suspense, and the current Oceania boss New Zealand team beat Tahiti 1-0 and easily advanced to the final of the Oceania division. Three days later, they will compete with the Solomon Islands for the title of Oceania Qualifier. But for New Zealand, the World Cup finals are at least half a step away.
In fact, this World Preliminary Tournament is the easiest qualifier in history for New Zealand. Due to volcanic earthquakes and the impact of biological events, Oceania was left with only one team to compete. The New Zealand team, which is outside the FIFA ranking 100, easily beat Papua New Guinea, Fiji and New Caledonia in the group stage, and even though a lot of scoring opportunities were wasted, it still narrowly beat Tahiti to reach the final. Based on the current balance of power, new Zealand should not have a problem taking the Solomon Islands.
With only 5 games to win the Oceania division, New Zealand didn't experience any pressure at all. But they can't relax yet, because the current New Zealand team is no longer the same team that won the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and drew with the defending champions Italy. The New Zealand team is now a bit weak, ranking behind the global top 100 for 8 consecutive years, and the number of international competitions is very small, only playing 8 games so far last year. That is, their team has neither any real combat experience nor quality games.
Even if it is possible to "clear" all opponents in Oceania, for New Zealand football that is "behind closed doors", it is indeed a bit of a fantasy to cross the fourth place in Central and North America (the United States, Mexico or Costa Rica). Take the few international matches that New Zealand have been able to handle in the past few years, they beat Chinese Taipei 1-0 in 18 years, and won Bahrain 1-0 in the warm-up last year, but this year's only official warm-up game was 1-3 lost to Jordan, who did not even score in the Asian Top 12.
0.5 World Cup tickets is actually an illusion, these years there is no opponent at all, New Zealand, the overall strength of the decline is serious, even with the famous Premier League striker Chris Wood, can not hide their identity in the world football. This may be the real reason why Australia fled the Oceania Football Federation, because dancing with fish belly will change dishes over time. Seeing such a New Zealand team, the national football team that eats sea cucumbers will probably be eager to try. In the latest edition of fifa rankings, New Zealand ranks 111th, while the national football team ranks 75th.