All Whites coach Darren Bazeley. Photo: Photosport
All Whites v Colombia
Sunday, 16 November
Kickoff 1pm
Chase Stadium, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Live blog updates on RNZ Sport
Much separates New Zealand and Colombia on a football field.
Not only are the two nations 72 places apart in the FIFA world rankings, the approach to the game differs in South America, compared to Oceania.
Their flair and goalscoring is something the All Whites can't easily replicate, and would be foolish to try, but the region's reputation for football's "dark arts" and "playing on the edge" is of interest to All Whites coach Darren Bazeley.
"It's something that we probably need to keep developing ourselves," he said. "That sort of street game, street knowledge, game intelligence at times, but we're also really happy with a group of honest, hardworking players that we have in the squad."
Bazeley does not want the his players caught up in incidents that can lead to ill-discipline, when they play Colombia in Florida on Sunday.
"We've got real good discipline throughout the squad, but there's going to be some challenging moments, and players at times need to get involved and look after themselves, look after each other and get through those tough moments.
"We don't want to be losing players [to red cards], that's for sure. That would make things really difficult for us."
Michael Boxall is aware of the "crafty" Colombian players. Photo: www.photosport.nz
Defender Michael Boxall is a senior player in the All Whites side and, playing in Major League Soccer in the United States, he has come up against players similar to those New Zealand will encounter across the November international window against Colombia and Ecuador.
"It's one of those things where you can give advice, but in the heat of the moment, you could find players who could be crafty and get under your skin," Boxall said.
"I think this is just a good opportunity to experience this in a friendly match, as opposed to at a World Cup that could have massive consequences on the team.
"We'll all have words with the whole squad about how to approach it, but until you're really in it and experience it firsthand, we won't really find out how you deal with it."
Aside from the niggle, the All Whites will also face attacking threats from Colombia that will challenge the defensive structure.
Luis Díaz of Colombia could cause the All Whites problems. Photo: Photosport
"The past handful of games that I've played with the like of Finn Surman, Tyler [Bindon] Franny [Francis de Vries] as well on my left side, everyone has worked their arses off as a group to make it easier on each other.
"I think, against top players like these, it's never an individual performance that's going to shut down, for example Luis Díaz. I think it's the whole collective, not just the back four and goalkeeper.
"We understand what we have to do. It's the whole 11 guys keeping things as compact as we can that's going to make things more difficult than expecting one player to just pocket one of the more inform players in the world."
Bazeley had to make late changes to the squad and they will look to find new ways to score goals without leading goalscorer and English Premier League striker Chris Wood.
"We've got some players that are runners," he said. "They run in behind really well, the timing of their runs is really good.
"We've got into a position over the last year, where we're putting a lot of balls into the box for Woodsy, and trying to feed him and replicate some of the service he gets at his club, and that's hard to replace.
"We've definitely talked around the type of balls that we feed into the box for these different strikers, because they are different. We're going to look to try and get into different type of areas, and maybe provide some different type of delivery for whoever.
"We've got a style of play that we don't tweak too much away from. We're obviously aware of a lot of [Colombia's] strengths, and we've raised them and we've looked at how we can help defend them.
"We need everybody to be at the top of their game and to work together, help each other. There's going to be some tough moments, they've got some good players, but if everybody's in that frame of mind to work together and to work hard, we can deal with that."
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