After Saturday’s opening scoreless draw with Ukraine at North Harbour Stadium, coach Darren Bazeley and the team meet the United States at the same venue – seeking their first ever win at the event – having grown in both knowledge and confidence terms.
Since Saturday afternoon’s encounter, Bazeley says the New Zealand side have been preparing physically and tactically for the challenge of an American side which took a 2-1 win from their first match against Myanmar at the Northland Events Centre.
“Our first game was very tough and the players put a lot of effort into it and since then we’ve been working really hard to make sure they’ve recovered and that they are ready to play this next game,” Bazeley said.
“We’ve watched their last four games including the Myanmar game from the other day. They are a good footballing team and they’ve got some good individuals and they play a slightly different style [to Ukraine].
“We’ll be ready to deal with what they throw at us. We’ve got our own style of play and how we defend but we do need to be aware of opposition strengths and be ready to deal with those.
“But maybe we’ll be able to affect them as well and change their shape a little bit so they have to combat what we’re trying to do to them.
“We’re going to have opportunities to score and we need to take those opportunities when we can.”
Some of those chances may fall to players who come into the game off the bench with Bazeley confident in the energy flowing through the whole squad after the contributions of substitutes Monty Patterson, Noah Billingsley and Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi on Saturday.
“The good thing now is that the squad is in a place where players came come in and do a good job. Te Atawhai came in and did a good job for the time he was on and when you look at that last 10 minutes we still were able to push and create some chances and do our style of play.”
Having played Saturday’s Group A opener in front of 25,000, Bazeley hopes his team will be backed by another big crowd on Tuesday night as the New Zealand side chase history once again in front of their own fans.
“To have a full house here [on Saturday], everybody saw the colour and the noise and the support was just unbelievable,” Bazeley said.
“If we can get as many of them back in stadium, it does really give the boys a big lift. When we went through the tough period in the game, the crowd got behind us and it really gave us a lift and helped us have that last push when we nearly scored the goal.
“I wish we could have given the fans that moment and in the 92nd minute if we’d scored it would have rewarded the fans for coming out and supporting us. But hopefully they’ve gone away and been proud of what they saw and they come again.”
FIFA U-20 World Cup 2015 – Match 13
Tuesday 2 June
New Zealand v United States
North Harbour Stadium, 7pm
New Zealand (from): 1. Oliver Sail (GK), 2. Jesse Edge, 3. Deklan Wynne, 4. Sam Brotherton, 5. Adam Mitchell, 6. Bill Tuiloma (capt), 7. Joel Stevens, 8. Moses Dyer, 9. Alex Rufer, 10. Clayton Lewis, 11. Matthew Ridenton, 12. Nik Tzanev (GK), 13. Brock Messenger, 14. Cory Brown, 15. Monty Patterson, 16. Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi, 17. Andrew Blake, 18. Andre de Jong, 19. Stuart Holthusen, 20. Noah Billingsley, 21. Damian Hirst (GK)
For more on the FIFA U-20 World Cup visit FIFA.com

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