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Important SN update for SouthlandThe mission failed successfully for Auckland’s football clubs
Sebastian Tan, AAP • June 26th, 2025 8:30 am
Auckland City have wrapped up their difficult Club World Cup campaign with a commendable result | Photo: AP
After a week spent as the butt of jokes and sparking club confusion with crosstown rivals, Auckland City might have just had the last laugh.
The part-timers from New Zealand have pulled off the biggest shock of the FIFA Club World Cup, drawing with Argentine giants Boca Juniors 1-1 to conclude their tournament in the United States.
Not bad for a side packed with tradies and teachers who fell 10-0 to Bayern Munich and 6-0 to Benfica earlier in the campaign.
Another Kiwi side - A-League Men premiers Auckland FC - were riding the bumps all the way with their semi-professional comrades.
Plenty had confused Auckland City for the Steve Corica-coached Auckland FC during the tournament, leading the ALM side to play the role of fact-checker, with hilarious results.
"Long day explaining there's two clubs in Auckland", one post read.
Others included responses with meme videos of gorillas looking sad and Cristiano Ronaldo raising a drink.
Auckland FC's Terry McFlynn said plenty were privately fooled by the confusion, saying "everyone thought it was our club".
"I was getting text messages from former coaches and former teammates wishing me all the best in the Club World Cup," the director of football told AAP.
"It's an easy mistake to make. We won the league in August, a few months before the Club World Cup."
While Auckland FC were not at this tournament, they might be at the next.
The Oceania Football Confederation is introducing a new competition - the OFC Professional League - next year, which will determine its next entrants to the Club World Cup.
The FIFA-backed league is currently considering clubs from across the region, and Auckland FC want in.
McFlynn said it would be "silly" and "disrespectful" not to bid for entry into the eight-team competition, which is also likely to have an Australian side.
OFC Pro League manager Stuart Larman said the competition would give a huge boost to the region's footballers currently in amateur environments looking to make the step up.
"When I was going across the islands, one of the things I was asking people, just out of curiosity, was how many competitive matches do your top players get in a year?," Larman told AAP.
"At the moment, they struggled to say one, two or three. Now, now we're guaranteeing the top players 17 highly competitive matches every single year.
"The more frequent highly competitive football will see an overall improvement in the standard football."
Australian NPL sides South Melbourne and Sunshine Coast Fire have already expressed interest alongside clubs from Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the Solomon Islands.
The successful sides will be announced in September.
