OFC heavyweights Auckland City are the region’s sole representatives at the new-look FIFA Club World Cup 2025™ and they enter off the back of yet another continental triumph.
A 4-0 win against Tahitian side AS Pirae in the 2024 OFC Champions League final made it three straight titles – and 10 of the past 12 – for the New Zealand powerhouse.
FIFA turns the spotlight on this winning-machine from the Pacific, how they qualified and some of the club’s all-time greats.
How they qualified
With the OFC’s slot at the FIFA Club World Cup determined by the rankings pathway, Auckland City already held an unassailable lead at the time that the criteria was determined in December 2023.
The Navy Blues’ sheer domination of their confederation’s top club competition has been unmatched anywhere in the world, at any point in history. Indeed, an astonishing spell of 10 continental titles in a 12-year span is a record that may well never be eclipsed.
In typically impressive fashion, the most recent OFC Champions League triumph was a masterclass at both ends of the pitch with the club scoring 13 and conceding just twice in their five matches in Tahiti.
Club Factfile
Year formed: 2004
Stadium: Kiwitea Street
Nickname: The Navy Blues
Club history
Formed in 2004, the amateur side wasted little time in announcing themselves on the national stage, winning the league in their very first season. A lengthy battle then ensued with the now-defunct Waitakere United which saw that pair win the following eight editions of the New Zealand Football Championship. Auckland then made the tournament their own playground, reeling off eight straight league titles from 2013 to 2020. Even the introduction of a new-look tournament, the New Zealand National League, couldn’t slow the Navy Blues’ juggernaut, with Auckland having also claimed the first three editions of the new format.
Not just content with bossing things locally, they translated their swashbuckling form onto the continental stage, winning the OFC Champions League in 2006 and 2009 before a remarkable string of seven straight titles from 2010-2017. With the three most recent titles also in their keeping, it’s hard to know what will slow this winning-machine from New Zealand’s north island.
The mighty Pacific outfit has also featured more times on the global stage than any other club, with 11 appearances at the previous incarnation of the FIFA Club World Cup, including a memorable run at Morocco 2014, where they finished on the podium, having seen off Mexican giants Cruz Azul in the third-place play-off.
Iconic players
Keryn Jordan
South Africa international Jordan may be gone but he will never be forgotten by the Kiwitea Steet faithful after a blistering five-year spell at the club, from 2005-2010, that saw him score at close to a goal a game. He also featured at the side’s first Club World Cup foray in 2006.
Undoubtedly the highlight of his time at the club were hat-tricks in both the 2006 and 2009 OFC Champions League finals, the first two continental titles that the club won. They were also triumphs that came against great personal struggle, with Jordan revealing he had played those matches while secretly receiving treatment for the cancer that would ultimately claim his life in 2013, aged just 37.
His son, Liam, is currently playing professionally in the Swedish top flight.
Ivan Vicelich
New Zealand’s – and Oceania’s – most-capped international of all time, the defender/midfielder earned a number of those caps, including at the FIFA World Cup™ in 2010, while turning out for the amateur Auckland City outfit from 2008-2016.
Locally-born, he captained the club to five OFC Champions League titles and to that unforgettable third-place finish at the 2014 Club World Cup where he also won the adidas Bronze Ball, sharing the podium with Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Emiliano Tade
The club’s record caps holder and all-time leading scorer, the Argentinian striker is a bona-fide Auckland City legend.
Originally arriving in New Zealand on a working holiday visa, having given up a law degree back home, Tade went from a potential career in the courtroom to handing out sentences on the football pitch.
An eight-time OFC Champions League winner, he also appeared in an astonishing seven straight editions of the previous FIFA Club World Cup, a mark that may never be equalled.
source
کلاس یوس