Long day explaining there’s two clubs in Auckland.
— Auckland FC (@fc_auckland) June 16, 2025
All the best for Saturday @AucklandCity_FC , we're backing you. 💪 pic.twitter.com/XE1WCUHaRJ
In 2024, Auckland FC won the A-League Premiership, finishing top of the regular season table in their first ever campaign. Unfortunately, they would lose out in the semi-finals of the finals series and therefore miss out on a place in the Grand Final. But for the newly formed franchise, it was still, nonetheless, a rather successful season.
Yes, Auckland has a rather prosperous professional soccer side, and they sit alongside fellow Kiwis Wellington Phoenix who have represented New Zealand in Australia’s top flight professional A-League for 18 years now.
So how come instead of Auckland FC, it was a bunch of amateurs and part-timers in the form of Auckland City who took the field to represent the city as well as country, and of course continent, in FIFA's brand new revamped Club World Cup yesterday which is supposed the feature the world’s biggest club sides (and got walloped 10-0 in the process)?
“Long day explaining there’s two clubs in Auckland”, posted Auckland FC on X, and with many no doubt confused, I thought I’d investigate further.
For the recent history of football in Auckland, we can go back to 1999 and the formation of the Auckland Kingz who played in the now defunct Australian National Soccer League (ANSL). Auckland thus played outside of the league structure in their home nation of New Zealand, much like the situation that sees several Canadian teams play in USA’s Major League Soccer and some Welsh teams play in the English league system.
When the A-League was formed in Australia in 2004 to replace the ASNL, the Kingz were themselves supplanted by the New Zealand Knights. The Knights lasted only 3 seasons before themselves stepping aside for Wellington Phoenix to take their place as New Zealand’s representatives in the A-League, and thus leaving the Auckland area no longer with a professional club.
The A-League would remain without an Auckland-based side until 2024 when new franchise Auckland FC, owned by Premier League side AFC Bournemouth’s proprietor Bill Foley, made their debut in the competition. But, despite finishing top of the regular season, Auckland FC were not given a spot in the AFC Champions League Elite as would normally be the case.
Due to being based in New Zealand, which in terms of football comes under the jurisdiction of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC), Auckland are unable to enter a competition ran by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) of which Australia has been a member since 2006 when they left the OFC for pastures new. This means AFC’s premier club competition is for Auckland FC out of bounds. Oceania has its own Champions League competition but, playing in an Australian League and not a New Zealand competition, there was no route into that competition either.
“A black hole or purgatory,” is what one New Zealand sports commentator called it when discussing the matter of being unable to play in continental competitions on a local sports radio station earlier today. This is an issue very much relevant right now with it impacting representation in FIFA’s new Club World Cup currently taking place and having been shone into the spotlight with Auckland city’s performance last night. Whether or not these problems surrounding international representation for New Zealand’s two biggest clubs can ever be resolved is perhaps a discussion best left for another day. However, if the only two professional clubs in Oceania’s most successful country cannot enter Oceania competitions and therefore cannot represent Oceania in FIFA’s new showpiece, then who can? A side composed of amateurs, apparently. Here’s that story.
Football in New Zealand is split into three amateur/semi pro regional leagues and, under the current format, the top clubs from each league qualify for a championship group alongside the reserve sides of the two aforementioned A-League clubs. At the completion of this Championship group, the top two sides face off in a Grand Final to determine the champion of New Zealand.
Since their formation in 2004, Auckland City have won the New Zealand Football Championship regular season twelve times and the Grand Final eight times. The club also has thirteen OFC Champions League titles to its name and, having had the best record of any club in that competition over the past four years, they were asked to represent the confederation at this year’s Club World Cup. But, despite their domestic and continental success, on the world stage Auckland City genuinely are real minnows of the global game. Something easily reflected in their player salaries and OPTA ranking, for example.
Whilst FC Bayern Munich, the club’s opponents in their opening match, might boast Harry Kane who earns reportedly 470,000€ a week, Auckland’s players have a salary cap of NZ$150 a week or just under 80€. Even compared to their A-League city rivals the difference is stark with the average A-League player earning AU$2862 a week or just under 1600€, almost 20 times what the highest paid Auckland City player can earn.
Another example of their status, or lack of it, are the OPTA Power Rankings, a global team ranking system for club sides. FC Bayern are currently ranked 6th, whereas Auckland City sit in 5072nd place, one place above a Portuguese 5th tier side, one below a top flight side from Burundi. No wonder Bayern won 10-0! 762nd is the ranking of Auckland FC.
Auckland City's part-timers include a primary school teacher, an insurance broker, a sales representative at Coca-Cola, a car salesman, a barber, and several students, one of whom will sit an exam from his hotel room during the tournament.
The differences between the two Auckland clubs are astounding never mind the gap between them and Bayern.
The Club World Cup represents all confederations and continents – even ones, in footballing terms, as obscure as Oceania. So, minnows they may be, but as number one in OFC, albeit due to their country’s two professional sides opting to play in a foreign land, they have earned their right to appear on the world’s stage.
Being the weakest of all the confederations by far, the OFC has only been allocated one spot in the Club World Cup with UEFA being given as many as 12 places in the 32-team tournament. But nonetheless, there they are, Auckland City, proudly representing Auckland, New Zealand, and, of course, Oceania on that global soccer platform they have been afforded. This despite being poor relations in the own city and even playing in the same league as their professional neighbour’s reserve side. All this whilst said professional neighbours stay at home.
