Kevin Fallon: ‘I thought they were robbed’

The All Whites will have to wait another four years for the opportunity to play at the Fifa World Cup finals after a heart-breaking loss in their final qualification game.

Kosta Barbarouses sees red
Photo: PHOTOSPORT

New Zealand was beaten 1-nil by Costa Rica in Doha with the All Whites having a goal controversially ruled out by video review.

Costa Rica scored after just three minutes but the All Whites responded well and thought they’d scored an equaliser through striker Chris Wood late in the first half, only for the goal to be ruled out by the video assistant referee, with a New Zealand player deemed to have committed a foul in the build-up.

The All Whites replacement player Kosta Barbarouses was given a red card in the 67th minute for a lunging tackle, further hampering New Zealand’s chances of levelling the score.

Coach Danny Hay felt more experienced officials should have controlled the game and wasn’t happy with some of the decisions made.

“There’s not much I can say about the officiating but people can make their own minds up but I thought it was pretty average and pretty disappointing.”

Kevin Fallon, who helped coach the 1982 All Whites World Cup team that went to Spain, isn’t a fan of video review and says unfortunately decisions like these can happen to underdogs when they’re playing a team ranked 70 places higher than them.

“When a smaller nation plays a bigger nation, and Costa Rica is a much bigger football nation than we are, they (officials) always seem to get influenced by the more experienced players.

“If Barcelona is playing Gisborne City, they listen to Barcelona players and they did that with the New Zealand players and I think they were robbed.”

Chris Wood thought he had scored
Photo: PHOTOSPORT

The All Whites players were reluctant to climb into the referee instead winger Liberato Cacace felt the side reacted well to all the decisions that went against them.

“Like going down early on we dominated the game, we really took the game to the Costa Ricans.

“Obviously the decisions are out of our hands and we accepted it and we reacted well and even after the red card we showed we can really play and be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

“But football is about scoring goals and defending the box and obviously we didn’t score and so couldn’t win the game.”

The All Whites had 67 percent of possession and had more shots on goal than Costa Rica.

But statistics don’t win games, goals do.

Keeper Oli Sail says the result is going to sit heavily with him for some time.

“I wish I was mid-season right now so I could switch my focus to something else because I’m on holiday now and it’s going to hurt for a while because I’m not going to be able to scratch that itch for a few months probably.”

While Sail has future tournaments to look forward to, it isn’t the case for a number of senior players, whose days in the international game could be numbered… including 33 year old captain Winston Reid.

“I haven’t crossed that bridge yet, I know I can still play the game at a high level, it will depend on my family. I haven’t made a decision but my body still feels good.”

Danny Hay wasn’t happy with the officiating
Photo: PHOTOSPORT

Reid was a member of the 2010 that reached the finals in South Africa.

Also there was fellow defender Ben Sigmund, who says with player depth in New Zealand growing steadily, an exciting four years lie ahead.

“They’re all young players so they’re only going to develop and get even better for the next one.

“It’s exciting for what the next four years hold.

“The amount of players that are in Europe playing professionally now there are a lot more to choose from and they’re only getting better.

So Costa Rica become the 32nd and last team to qualify for the World Cup finals at the end of the year, it’s their third consecutive World Cup and sixth in total and they can now look forward to group games against Spain, Germany and Japan.

As for the All Whites they have to wait another 4 years, but qualification should be a bit easier for the 2026 tournament in North America with Oceania now having an automatic spot in an expanded 48-team tournament.

The All Whites next game is against Australia at Eden Park in September.