They couldn’t – could they? How the Wellington Phoenix Men are defying expectations and rewriting tired narratives

It was 19 January 2024; a balmy, breezy Friday evening in New Zealand’s capital. And, under the lights of Sky Stadium –?a 34,500-seater venue dubbed “The Ring of Fire” by local fans –?time was running out for the Wellington Phoenix Men.

New Zealand’s only professional men’s football club were trailing, 0-1, to Melbourne Victory. 90 minutes had ticked by. A red card to Tim Payne –?a right-back in a career-high purple patch of form – had reduced the Phoenix to 10 men just before half-time. They had 36% possession; 10 shots to Melbourne’s 19; four corners to Victory’s 16.

Wellington looked, physically and mentally, exhausted. They looked, in fact, just like the team who had only won 12 times in 50 prior meetings with this Melbourne team. And, level on points heading into the fixture (but, thanks to a recent change to how the A-League ranks clubs, first on the ladder), the Phoenix looked set to cede three points, and top spot, to their Victorian rivals.

And why not? The Phoenix’s history, one could argue, is defined by such a theme. One best characterised not as failure, perhaps, but at least a marked absence of success.

When 2022 brought major honours for the A-League’s two latest expansion clubs –?a major premiership for Western United (who entered the league in 2019/20) and an FFA Cup for Macarthur FC (2020/21) – Wellington became the only A-League Men club without silverware to their name. Prior to that, a particularly zealous coup saw Western United, in their inaugural season, sign Wellington’s star midfielder, goalkeeper, and 281-game club captain Andrew Durante. Oh…and their manager, Marko Rudan. (Macarthur would, two years later, pull off a similar feat in pinching another Wellington fan favourite: 19-goal No 10 Ulises Davila.)

Phoenix fans will point to the fact that the club, having made the A-League’s final series?nine times out of their 16 full seasons so far, are no slouches. And going by league form, they’d be right. But beyond the 2009/10 season?–?which saw Wellington win two home elimination finals, only crashing out in the preliminary final to a rampant Sydney FC – the Phoenix haven’t actually won any post-season matches.

Is it a matter of mentality? Or nerve? Of big-game verve?

Call it consistency, call it mediocrity. Dub it, on the owners’ part, a lack of ambition; or perhaps a simple desire to live within the club’s modest financial means.

But to a fan of the English Premier League, the Phoenix are the 2016/17 Southampton of Australia’s top-tier: a plucky underdog that, despite punching above its weight on the field, inevitably sees its best players picked off post-season. Or, perhaps, as a club in the mould of a certain ‘Spursy’ North London outfit –?an always-the-bridesmaid type with a propensity for falling if not at, then at least slightly before, the final hurdle. A club that seems perennially lurching, each season, from one ‘transitional phase’ to the next.

Even going into this season, the Phoenix looked to be playing to type. Eight players –?including vice-captain Clayton Lewis and All Whites goalkeeper Oli Sail?–?departed, with Ufuk Talay, Wellington’s most successful manager to date, following them out the door. The only players to come the opposite way were journeyman goalkeeper Jack Duncan and Mohamed Al-Taay, a player with just 29 league appearances under his belt. The other incomings (Lukas Kelly-Heald, Isaac Hughes, Luke Supyk, and Fin Conchie)?were promoted from the academy – the latter in particularly controversial circumstances.

Add to that a 0-3 away drubbing to Melbourne City in the Round of 16 of the FFA Cup, and Phoenix entered the season as every pundit’s wooden-spooner. Doomed, perhaps, to spend another season in mid- to lower-table purgatory; less A-League ladder, more Jacob’s Ladder.

So, when the flashing board of the fourth official in Wellington’s most recent game against Melbourne Victory indicated just five minutes of added time, the script looked written; the narrative set. The worst part? It wasn’t even an original one. The footballing equivalent of a hackneyed Hollywood exec fishing an old plot from the back of a dusty desk drawer, perhaps; a season 3 Seinfeld rerun added, slapdash, to an unimaginative Monday afternoon television roster. A reversion to the established footballing mean.

The Phoenix as the plucky, passionate, proletariat, as everyone’s favourite “second team”; but ultimately unambitious, unfancied. Unlikely; unlucky.

But then, something happened. In the 91st minute, Phoenix midfielder Ben Old launched a speculative long ball into the box. Goalless striker Oskar van Hattum, having struggled for minutes across the last two seasons, miscontrolled?it. The youngster went down in the penalty area, in what looked to be scant contact from Victory defender Jason Geria. Play continued.

And then, something else happened.

Referee Daniel Elders, called to the pitchside monitor by the VAR, deemed that Geria had fouled Van Hattum. And just like that, the Phoenix had a penalty.

Before the eyes of 9,139 partisan onlookers, Wellington’s 131-game captain, midfielder Alex Rufer, duly dispatched it. The place erupted. Cue jubilant scenes; unleash Freed From Desire.

Amid the shirtless bodies and writhing, rapturous scenes that followed –?against the backdrop of a point salvaged, at the death, from the maw of nothingness –?no one was thinking it. But they were feeling it. That deep down, buried beneath the soil of 17 years of mid-table finishes and suppressed expectations, a few promising, yellow-and-black seeds of hope were beginning to take root; starting to push their fertile green shoots of suggestion to the surface.

It wasn’t a dream, it was really happening: the Wellington Phoenix would see out the first half of the 2023/24 A-League Men season at the top of the tree.

It’s been 3,224 days since the Phoenix last breathed the rarefied air of top spot on the A-League ladder, after ascending to its summit for three matches in March 2015. With just five games to go in the 2014/15 season, however, form faltered. Consecutive 0-3 home losses preceded a goalless draw as the Phoenix took just four points from a possible 15, finishing third. The elimination final that followed – in which they entertained sixth-placed Melbourne City in front of a raucous home crowd of 10,171 –?saw Wellington limp to a dour, dismal defeat.

So what might success look like for Wellington this season, then –?and what’s taken them from expected cellar dwellers to the top of the ladder in the first half of the 2023/24 campaign?

Firstly, the impact of coach Giancarlo “Chiefy” Italiano can’t be overstated. Labelled in pre-season as a sensible, if slightly bland, appointment, Talay’s former assistant won the role ahead of flashier overseas alternatives. But he’s taken his old boss’ blueprint and redrawn the lines, and the results have been remarkable –?particularly where Wellington’s defence is concerned. Working with assistant coach Adam Griffiths and goalkeeping coach Ruben Parker, Italiano has rethought the Phoenix’s approach to shot concession.

“I think if you look at the chance creation,” Italiano said in December after the Phoenix extended their unbeaten run to six matches, “even though we do concede quite a number of shots, they’re not clean-cut opportunities… [not] one-on-ones, or two-vs-twos. They’re more half-chances in the box with a lot of numbers behind the ball, and that’s done by design.”

The team that shipped 45 goals last season (including 4-1, 5-1, and 4-0 shellackings in the space of just over a month across March and April 2023) have conceded just over a third of that (16) in half as many matches. Only Western Sydney Wanderers (14) and Melbourne Victory (15) boast stingier defences.

The form of players in key positions has helped, too. Phoenix goalkeeper Alex Paulsen has been revelatory, keeping five clean sheets and saving a league-high three penalties. Meanwhile, prodigal son Kosta Barbarouses – back for a third stint at the hometown club he made 21 appearances for between 2007 and 2010, and scored five for in the 2016/17 season –?has shrugged off the shackles of expectation. Reinvigorated, the 33-year-old looks like the player who won four championships across spells in Sydney and Melbourne, and already has eight goals and four assists to his name this season.

At the other end of the age spectrum, defenders Finn Surman and Kelly-Heald are thriving in a bolstered defence. Having scored half of his career-total haul of four goals in the last two games, penalty hero Rufer is clearly relishing both his leadership and tactical roles; stepping into a more advanced position up the pitch, and out of the shadow of his uncle. (New Zealand footballing royalty Wynton Rufer, three-time Oceania Player of the Year who scored 59 goals for Werder Bremen.)

The absence with a thigh injury to star striker Oskar Zawada –?not seen since the Phoenix’s first of two losses of the season, on 9 December against Newcastle Jets –?could’ve been damning. The Pole’s 15 goals last campaign were crucial to the Phoenix’s playoff push; his four goals and one assist in six matches have been similarly vital to this campaign’s success. It looked a bad omen. Yet Wellington’s other attackers have filled that void (all 6’4” of it) with gusto –?the industry of stalwart striker David Ball and Bozhidar Kraev’s quality carrying the ‘Nix through a congested holiday fixture list and defying any gloomy portents.

Finally, there’s the results. A topsy-turvy thriller against Perth Glory in the A-League's Unite Round saw the Phoenix reverse an early deficit, then shade the match 4-3 with a late goal. It was one of the most entertaining matches the Phoenix –?or the Glory, for that matter –?have ever produced. There was the 3-0 bombing of Macarthur on their own patch, which saw the Phoenix blow their Sydney-based opponents away in the second half with three goals and a penalty. There were the two late goals to break the deadlock against Western Sydney the following week, when an Old strike capped 94 minutes of cagey, controlled football. And a buccaneering 5-2 victory over an in-form Brisbane Roar on a sunny slice of Sky Stadium turf.

There were six games without a loss to open the season. And, remarkably, a game at Melbourne Victory away at AAMI Park in which the unfancied ‘Nix –?despite having no shots on target throughout the entire game –?snatched a 1-1 result. Wellington have played their part in score draws, ground out 1-0 away wins; attacked with swashbuckling ferocity and parked the bus with equal aplomb. Ultimately, they’ve found ways to win, or at least take a point – and isn’t that, as they say, the mark of champions?

Phoenix detractors will claim the club are lucky to be there. That their vaunted league position is only down to a little-publicised off-season tweak to how the A-League ranks its teams. That better-heeled clubs like Victory and the Wanderers –?cantering juggernauts of clubs with storied legacies of success –?will run the Nix down. And that their average goal-scoring form (remarkably, their 23 goals in 13 matches is better than only three other teams in the A-League)?can’t sustain a serious push for the minor premiership. And they may be right.

Right? The Phoenix don’t have the budget, the nous (heck, even the aspirations) to compete at the top?–?let alone win the whole damn thing.

But isn’t that what they said about 5000/1 Leicester City ahead of their title-winning 2015/16 season? About 1985’s Hellas Verona side, or Kaiserslautern in 1998? (A side that, incidentally, contained one Wynton Rufer.) Even recent European examples - Napoli's first Serie A win in 33 years last season, and Bayer Leverkusen’s four-point lead at the Bundesliga’s apex this one –?prove that you don’t have to dig too deep into the history books for a juicy David and Goliath narrative.

The Phoenix have worn that underdog tag since their first game in the A-League in 2007 (a 2-2 home draw against, oddly enough, Melbourne Victory). In the 14 years since, that label –?that identity – has been an effective shield. They’ve taken games to tough opposition (to varying degrees of success), developed players who’ve been sold on to Bayern Munich and the English second tier and –?both statistically and anecdotally –?outperformed expectations.

Now, those expectations are suddenly escalating. The rest of the league is shaking off a slumber to find the usual table-topping candidates deposed, and waking up to the Phoenix’s unlikely –?yet undeniable –?threat. As for the Phoenix, they’re set to face their own threat, in the form of a Bill Foley-backed Auckland-based expansion club. Provisionally named Auckland FC, the club will compete in the A-League from the 2024/25 season: lighting the blue touch paper for the first professional round-ball derby in New Zealand’s nascent footballing history. Can the Phoenix sustain their underdog status under the weight of recent success, and the advantage of an additional 17 years of league experience over its new neighbours? Or might we be witnessing the birth of a new Phoenix, where success is measured not in finals appearances or positive away results, but by pushing for a little more?

Just as the club emerged, almost two decades ago, from the defunct New Zealand Knights, could it be time for the Phoenix to repeat that incendiary feat of their eponym? To cast that underdog status to the flames, and stoke the exciting embers of a legitimate title charge?

Only time will tell –?and the A-League’s bookmakers, who have Wellington behind four other teams for this year’s title, aren’t getting too excited. Nor, really, should any of us –?whether we support Wellington, or simply love to root for the underdog.

But still. No way. They couldn’t.

…could they?