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The only unbeaten team at the 2010 FIFA World Cup was not Spain. It was not the Netherlands, who reached the final. It was New Zealand – a nation of 4.4 million people, ranked 78th in the world, playing in their first World Cup since 1982. Three matches, three draws, zero defeats. The All Whites left South Africa with two points, no victories, and a result against Italy that still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when I watch the replay. This is the story of how it happened, why it matters, and what it tells us about the All Whites’ return to the World Cup in 2026.
How the All Whites Got to South Africa
New Zealand’s path to the 2010 World Cup ran through the OFC – the smallest and weakest of FIFA’s six continental confederations – and it was supposed to be straightforward. It was not. The All Whites had missed the 2006 World Cup after a play-off loss to Australia, and the scar tissue from that defeat hung over the qualifying campaign like a Southerly front.
Ricki Herbert, the head coach, built his squad around pragmatism. The All Whites did not have the individual talent to match even mid-tier opponents from other confederations, so Herbert drilled defensive organisation, set-piece efficiency, and a counter-attacking structure that turned weaknesses into a system. Ryan Nelsen, the Blackburn Rovers centre-back, anchored the defence. Shane Smeltz, a striker bouncing between A-League clubs, led the line with more effort than finesse. Tim Brown, Mark Paston, and Ivan Vicelich – names that resonated in New Zealand but meant nothing to the global football audience – rounded out a squad built on resilience rather than flair.
The OFC qualifying stages were navigated with difficulty. A 0-0 draw against Fiji in the semi-final round caused panic, and the two-leg play-off against Bahrain – the intercontinental hurdle – tested every nerve in the country. New Zealand won 1-0 on aggregate, with Nelsen’s header in the home leg at Westpac Stadium securing the result. The celebrations in Wellington were disproportionate to the global significance of the achievement, and that was precisely the point: for New Zealand, getting to the World Cup was the achievement. Anything after that was a bonus.
The draw in Cape Town placed the All Whites in Group F alongside Italy, Paraguay, and Slovakia. Italy were the reigning world champions, winners in 2006 with a squad still featuring Fabio Cannavaro, Gianluigi Buffon, and Andrea Pirlo. Paraguay had reached four consecutive World Cups and were ranked inside the top 30. Slovakia were making their debut as an independent nation but had eliminated the Netherlands and Poland in qualifying. No credible preview gave New Zealand any chance of advancing. Most gave them no chance of taking a single point.
The Three Matches: Slovakia, Italy, Paraguay
Rustenburg, 15 June 2010. New Zealand vs Slovakia. The All Whites conceded in the seventh minute – Robert Vittek finishing from close range – and the doomsday scenario seemed imminent. A 78th-rated side going behind early against a European qualifier in their World Cup opener is normally the beginning of a rout. Instead, it was the beginning of something else entirely.
Winston Reid, a 21-year-old centre-back playing for Midtjylland in Denmark’s second division, headed in a corner kick in the 93rd minute to make it 1-1. The equaliser came so late that many Kiwi fans watching on TV at home – where it was 5:30 a.m. – had already started composing their post-mortem. Reid’s goal was the last action of the match. New Zealand had a point, against the odds, against the scoreline, and against the clock.
Nelspruit, 20 June 2010. Italy vs New Zealand. If the Slovakia draw was improbable, the Italy result was inconceivable. Marcello Lippi’s squad included Buffon, Cannavaro, Pirlo, Daniele De Rossi, and Alberto Gilardino – a collection of talent that, on paper, should have dismantled the All Whites without breaking a sweat. The opening 20 minutes suggested exactly that: Italy controlled possession, probed the flanks, and looked capable of scoring at will.
Then Shane Smeltz happened. In the 24th minute, a long ball forward found Smeltz in the right channel. He took one touch, cut inside Cannavaro, and fired past Federico Marchetti to give New Zealand a 1-0 lead against the reigning world champions. The Royal Bafokeng Stadium fell silent, then erupted. The small pocket of Kiwi fans – maybe two thousand in a stadium of 32,000 – produced noise that carried to the press box, where I remember watching a colleague remove his headphones in disbelief.
Italy equalised through Iaquinta’s header in the 29th minute, and the remaining 61 minutes were the longest hour most New Zealand fans have ever experienced. Italy pushed, the All Whites held. Herbert’s defensive structure – a compact 4-4-2 dropping into a 4-5-1 without the ball – frustrated Italy’s creative players into long-range efforts that flew wide or into the arms of Mark Paston (who had dislocated his shoulder in warm-up and was replaced by James Bannatyne at half-time). The final whistle triggered celebrations that were broadcast on every news channel in New Zealand. The All Whites had held the world champions. One-all. A point that still reverberates.
Polokwane, 24 June 2010. Paraguay vs New Zealand. With two points from two matches, the All Whites needed a win to have any chance of advancing – and even a win might not have been enough, depending on goal difference. Paraguay, by contrast, needed only a draw to secure second place behind Italy (who had beaten Slovakia). The tactical reality was grim: Paraguay had no reason to open up, and New Zealand lacked the attacking firepower to break down a well-organised South American defence that was content to sit.
The match finished 0-0. It was not memorable in the way the Italy draw was memorable – there were no headers from set pieces, no Smeltz moments of brilliance. It was a disciplined, attritional performance by a team that had exceeded every expectation placed upon it and ran out of runway before running out of spirit. Paraguay advanced with five points. Slovakia qualified on four, thanks to a shock win over Italy. New Zealand finished with two points, level with Italy, but eliminated on goal difference.
The defending world champions, Italy, went home alongside New Zealand. The All Whites, ranked 78th in the world, finished their World Cup campaign unbeaten. No other team at the 2010 tournament could say the same.
The Italy Draw: New Zealand’s Greatest Footballing Moment
There is an argument – and I make it without reservation – that the 1-1 draw against Italy on 20 June 2010 is the single greatest result in New Zealand’s sporting history. The All Blacks’ record is magnificent but expected. New Zealand’s cricket team has produced individual moments of brilliance. But a team ranked 78th in the world, assembled from A-League squads and lower-division European clubs, holding the reigning World Cup champions to a draw on the biggest stage in sport – that is an achievement that exists outside the normal parameters of expectation.
The result mattered beyond the scoreline because it changed how New Zealand thought about football. The All Whites had been an afterthought in a country dominated by rugby union, cricket, and netball. The 2010 campaign – and the Italy draw in particular – put football on the national consciousness in a way that decades of domestic competition had failed to achieve. Smeltz’s goal was replayed endlessly. Reid’s last-minute header against Slovakia became a pub-quiz answer. The All Whites were, for a brief and glorious window, the team every Kiwi talked about.
The betting community took a lesson too. Before the Italy match, the draw was priced at approximately 4.50 on the international markets – implying a 22% probability. Punters who assessed New Zealand’s defensive structure, Italy’s ageing legs, and the motivational peak of an underdog on the world stage would have estimated the draw closer to 28-30%. That 6-8 percentage point gap was real value, and it paid. The result was not a fluke; it was the product of meticulous preparation meeting favourable conditions, priced incorrectly by a market that could not see past the FIFA rankings.
The Legacy for 2026
Sixteen years separate the All Whites’ 2010 campaign from their return to the World Cup in 2026, and almost everything has changed. The squad is entirely different – Chris Wood, the current talisman, was 18 and uncapped in 2010. The manager is Darren Bazeley, not Ricki Herbert. The format has expanded from 32 to 48 teams. The hosts are in North America, not Africa. The opponents in Group G – Belgium, Iran, Egypt – bear no resemblance to Italy, Paraguay, and Slovakia.
What has not changed is the structural reality of New Zealand’s position: a small nation, a modest football infrastructure, a team built on organisation and spirit rather than individual brilliance, entering a World Cup as heavy underdogs in their group. The 2010 campaign proved that this profile can compete at the highest level for three matches. Not dominate, not advance, but compete – take points off superior opponents, avoid embarrassing defeats, and leave the tournament with dignity and a story worth telling.
The 2026 version of the All Whites has advantages the 2010 squad did not. Chris Wood is a proven Premier League striker with over 60 career goals in England’s top flight – a calibre of attacker Herbert could only dream of. The expanded format offers a third-place qualification route that did not exist in 2010; had the best-third-place rule applied in South Africa, New Zealand’s two points might have been enough to advance. The BC Place venue in Vancouver provides a quasi-home atmosphere that the All Whites never enjoyed in South Africa.
The 2010 legacy is not a blueprint – it is a benchmark. It tells the 2026 squad and its supporters that the improbable is achievable, that odds are opinions and not facts, and that a team with limited talent but unlimited cohesion can make a World Cup count. For Kiwi punters, the legacy is more specific: the All Whites’ World Cup 2026 odds will almost certainly undervalue them in at least one group-stage fixture, just as the market undervalued them against Italy 16 years ago. Finding that fixture and backing it is both a punt and a tribute.