New Zealand’s place was confirmed as one of the best third placed sides after Saturday afternoon’s Group C games saw Senegal come from behind to beat Qatar 2-1 and Portugal were 3-1 winners over Colombia.
Coach Darren Bazeley was confident after Friday’s result that his side would move on and is glad the squad didn’t have to endure a prolonged wait to confirm their place.
“Funnily enough we didn’t have to wait long after our result last night,” Bazeley said, “it’s come in the first round of games.”
“We looked at all the other groups and where they were standing and who was playing who and we were pretty confident that we’d done enough to get through and that was proved right pretty quickly. We’re very, very pleased.”
Bazeley said now the New Zealand side is confirmed in the knockout phase, work will begin on plotting a path to the quarter-finals regardless of their round of 16 opponent.
“From what we’ve been told it could be Portugal in Hamilton or Ghana here in Wellington. Both would be great games to play and we’ve not really got a favourite. Either of those, once we find out, we’ll start looking at how we can try and beat them.”
“It’s pretty satisfying to do what we set out to do but now we need to go and try and do another thing and this next step would be a real history making one.”
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