Only 'flawless' football will do for All Whites

There is only one way for the All Whites to stay in the Football World Cup - and that requires perfection.

The team has a last chance to extend their World Cup run when they face Belgium in Vancouver on Saturday and coach Darren Bazeley believes error-free football is the only way it will happen.

Bazeley has mixed emotions about the situation the team is in after the first two group games - a draw with Iran and loss against Egypt - and sitting at the bottom of Group G.

"It still hurts that we've only got the one point after the performances. But that one point did mean that we go to the end of the tournament in the group stage knowing a win and you go through, we've given ourselves that chance.

"We could have been on more points [but] there's teams that are going into this third game already out of the World Cup, and that's not us.

"We came for knockout football and, in effect, we've got that. [It's] come around earlier, but now we're playing knockout football.

"That was probably always going to be the case for us anyway, where we'd need to pick up points in this game to go through and achieve what we set out to do."

Bazeley said his side needed to believe that an upset against Belgium, and the All Whites' first win against a top-10 side, was possible.

"In this game, we need to be flawless, we can't make a mistake.

"There's too many really world-class players on the pitch that if we make a mistake, we could get punished.

"I think it's going to have to be a perfect performance in and out of possession. We're going to have to be brave, courageous on the ball and, again, somebody's going to have to take a moment of quality and score a goal or two or three."

The All Whites have been in the 80s in the Fifa rankings since late 2024, the majority of the time Bazeley has been in charge.

Bazeley said the squad believed they were better than the ranking suggested and that could have caught a few teams and spectators off-guard.

"It's difficult with the ranking system. We don't play enough competitive games to achieve those high-scoring ranking points.

"We're definitely climbing, and I think this is a team that is going to do great things over the next few years.

"I think people watching [the World Cup] weren't expecting us to play a certain way and to draw with Iran when we feel like we should have won. And then what we did with Egypt in the first half I think has shown people that maybe the rankings don't necessarily count."