The only amateur side in the newly expanded FIFA Club World Cup, Auckland City would appear to be the odd ones out at the tournament. But as goalkeeper Conor Tracey told ESPN, the club are serving a much larger purpose: representing the majority of footballers around the world.
One thing that needs to be established early — and a hurdle that has already encountered numerous times by Auckland City’s players and staff this week — is that they are not Auckland FC.
New Zealand is unable to support its own fully professional league, which means Wellington Phoenix and Auckland FC play in the Australian-based A-League Men. To make matters even more confusing, because New Zealand belongs to the Oceania Football Confederation and Australia is in the Asian Football Confederation, the Phoenix and Auckland FC — owned by American billionaire businessman Bill Foley — have one foot in both camps, and are therefore barred from participating in continental club competitions in either.
That has left the door ajar for Auckland City to become the face of Oceania on the global stage. Establishing themselves as New Zealand’s preeminent non-professional power over the past two decades, winning 13 Oceanian Champions League titles. they have become regulars at the Club World Cup, competing in 10 tournaments. They even finished third under the old format in 2014, beating Mexico’s Cruz Azul on penalties.
And whereas their previous five visits to the tournament have all ended after a single game, this year’s expanded iteration will guarantee the Kiwi side at least three matches in a group with Bayern Munich, Benfica and Boca Juniors.
“Every [previous] Club World Cup has just involved preparing for the one game,” Tracey told ESPN. “That’s unique in itself, and it’s been great. But to be guaranteed three of those massive games, and, you could arguably say, against bigger clubs, it’s fantastic.
“We all went to the club rooms to watch the draw live as a team, and watching us draw Bayern Munich straight away was ridiculous. My brother turned to me and laughed and said, ‘Haha! Harry Kane is going to score 10 past ya!'”
Based out of Tennessee for the tournament — Tracey confirmed that, as a Kiwi, of course he likes the local barbecue — City will open their campaign against the Bundesliga champions at Cincinnati’s TWL Stadium on Sunday. It’s truly a battle of David vs. Goliath. The Bavarians are Germany’s most successful club and six-time champions of Europe; Auckland City are an amateur side that ply their trade in the New Zealand Men’s National League.
“It’s a unique piece of this whole puzzle of the Club World Cup,” Tracey said. “We are — not in an egomaniacal way — sort of representing the 99.9% of footballers out there; 0.1% of footballers are professionals but we’re the rest — and it’s not an easy gig.”
Indeed, according to FIFA data, there are just 128,876 professional players around the world — a tiny proportion of the estimated 250 million who play the game in some capacity. And while plenty of conversation surrounding fatigue heading into the Club World Cup has centred on the increasingly unsustainable demands being placed on the game’s elite, Auckland’s amateur contingent face their challenges, too.
Playing in the second of three major tournaments they’ll enter this year alongside their domestic league and cup duties — the Club World Cup joining the OFC Champions League and FIFA Intercontinental Cup — most of the squad is made up of players who balance their footballing commitments with full-time jobs, with a few of those still living at home or completing university studies juggling part-time employment.
Outside football, Tracey works in a supervisory role at a veterinary supply warehouse, overseeing the distribution of pharmaceuticals, nutrition, and controlled drugs to veterinarians across New Zealand. Before he left for the United States, he took on extra responsibilities and added overtime, feeling the effects of burning the candle at both ends.
“The leave is always an issue, it’s never easy,” Tracey said. “When I joined this company, I did tell them, ‘If you’re wanting to sign me on, I would love to be here, but the problem is that I’ve already committed to football.’
“We’ve got people at the club who are all of a similar mindset, who believe the exact same things that we do. For all the players working full-time, playing and training full-time is really difficult. It’s really, really hard. We’re slogging it out.
“We don’t see the sunshine, really, because we’re at work all day, go and train, and then we come back [home] at 9 p.m., 9:30 p.m. … for some of the guys who have families, it’s very difficult.”
On the field, whereas Auckland City tend to be able to dictate terms at home, they’re well aware that won’t be the case when they take the field against European and South American giants in the coming weeks. The Kiwi side hasn’t delved too deeply into the individual star power that could be deployed against them but, instead, how they’ll operate as a collective unit, both in and (mostly) out of possession. Falling to a 1-0 defeat against 2024 Asian champions Al Ain in their final warm-up fixture, that narrow defeat came less than a year on from the 6-2 defeat they suffered against the Emirati side at the 2024 FIFA Intercontinental Cup.
“That’s exactly what we’ve been training for,” explained Tracey. “We know how we do it to other teams, now it’s going to be the complete flip; that’s what we’re expecting anyway.
“We’re now working on our shape, formation, tactics, all to suit what we’re expecting. It’s Bayern Munich. It’s Benfica. It’s Boca Juniors. They are notoriously the best teams in the world. Everything that we’ve done so far is prepping us, I think, in a realistic way of how the game will most probably go.
“All the hard yards that we’ve done in Oceania and New Zealand, I guess we’ve already succeeded in that way. We’ve worked so hard to get to where we are, and we’re already proud of what we’ve done. Just getting to this tournament is a success in itself.”