Auckland City FC: ‘We are the working-class team at the FIFA Club World Cup'

New York Times

15 hours ago

Angus Kilkolly lives life to a steady rhythm.
Auckland City's centre-forward is a hard-working, instinctive goalscorer, but also a regional manager for a tool company. When he speaks to The Athletic, dawn is breaking in New Zealand through the window behind him.
'My day-to-day is managing people and sales,' Kilkolly says. 'My life revolves around getting to the office for 7am, going to training after work, and then coming home at 9pm. Outside of work, it's just football. Then I live that on repeat.'
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As he speaks to us, Kilkolly is four days away from leaving for the Club World Cup in the United States where, today (Sunday), Auckland City — the champions of the Oceania confederation in each of the past four seasons — with their amateur players, will begin their group-phase schedule against one of the sport's superpowers: Bayern Munich, 34-time champions of Germany, including in 12 of the last 13 years, and six-time European champions.
For the 29-year-old, it means the familiar rhythms are about to change. When we talk to Kilkolly, City still have two fixtures to fulfil before they leave for the States so must play those on consecutive days — the following Saturday and Sunday — and there is an important hire that must be made before he turns on his out-of-office.
His boss is joking about that — he thinks — but this is familiar. All of his annual leave is used on football trips. Last season, he and Auckland City went to French Polynesia and the United Arab Emirates. This year, they have already played in the Solomon Islands, and Kilkolly will need to take unpaid leave to cover their stay in America. Some members of the squad have not made the trip, having been unable to secure the time off from work.
This is the world from which City's players come — and they are not to be confused with the other team from Auckland. Auckland FC are a franchise founded in 2024 that competes in the mostly Australian A-League. As a result, they would take part in the Asian Champions League (AFC) if successful, rather than the Oceania (OFC) equivalent, from which City qualified for this Club World Cup.
That is not the only difference.
Auckland FC are a fully professional team owned by Bill Foley, the American billionaire who also owns Bournemouth in the Premier League and ice hockey's Vegas Golden Knights in the NHL, plus stakes in French side Lorient and Hibernian in Scotland. They play in a 25,000-capacity stadium and are sponsored by blue-chip companies including McDonald's and New Balance.
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All of which is very much not Auckland City. Their home is Kiwitea Street, which holds 5,000 fans. The cost of their flights to America alone for this tournament was roughly twice their annual revenue.
Of course, they are underdogs and from the other side of football's velvet rope; the inequities describe themselves. But Kilkolly and his team-mates are truly football men who have sacrificed as much as anyone to be at this first revamped and expanded Club World Cup.
Locally, City are a power.
They are 10-time national champions, and have won the OFC Champions League 13 times since 2006, each one qualifying them for the Club World Cup; they even managed a bronze medal in the far smaller annual version 11 years ago, beating Mexican top-flight side Cruz Azul on penalties in the third-place play-off.
On the global stage, they play the role often occupied by their opponents in New Zealand and wider Oceania.
'In most games,' Kilkolly explains, 'we have about 67 per cent possession and play against low blocks, so it probably is going to be a little bit different (in the States). We face teams with 11 guys on the edge of the box quite often and it can be hard to break down.
'We're very possession-based. We've scored a lot of late winners in our history because we're patient and wear teams down. A lot of teams want the chance to beat Auckland City. It's their cup final in a sense.'
During some league games since the group-stage draw was made in December, there have been comments from rival players, too, about what Bayern may inflict upon them at Cincinnati's TQL Stadium later today.
So, is there any trepidation?
'Not really,' Kilkolly says. 'I look at the way my life and career have gone and and I don't think there's time for fear. If there's fear, there's doubt. If we go in there with confidence and work off naivety instead, there's probably more chance of success.'
Kilkolly grew up in Hawke's Bay, around 200 miles (320km) south-east of Auckland on New Zealand's North Island, and has been playing football since he was four. His first steps were with Hawke's Bay United, where his father, Tim, was involved in the academy.
'That's where I found my love for the game,' he says. 'Getting older, I was always the first at training. I would always be at a game on the weekend, or travelling on buses to away matches.
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'You've got to dream. I wanted to see how good I could be, and I've just tried to see how much experience I can get out of the game. I guess that's why I went to Lithuania when I was 19 — to try to have a go in Europe. I didn't really enjoy it, but it was another place where football took me. Another life experience.'
Kilkolly first played at a Club World Cup, in its original format, with Team Wellington in 2018. He joined Auckland City in 2021 and has been to two editions of the FIFA tournament since, but nothing to compare to what's coming over the next few weeks. But although none of his family are going to the U.S. and Auckland's three group games all kick off early-morning New Zealand time, his mother and two sisters will be watching, and have planned to get together, brew a coffee and watch the team's third fixture, against 35-time Argentine champions Boca Juniors (a 6am kick-off in Auckland).
That will likely be a tender moment.
Three years ago, Kilkolly was in the middle of a training session when he received a call to tell him his brother had taken his own life. Last year, his father passed away in April, having been diagnosed with cancer two months earlier.
Through the shock and lasting grief, football has provided sanctuary.
'I come from a region where you have to be resilient, and you are taught early that life isn't always easy,' he adds. 'But there have been times when it has been tough and football has been the saviour. Being able to train so much and play so much has given me a happy place, and for two or three hours, it has given me somewhere where I can forget.'
His attitude towards the daunting task ahead is what you might expect. Enjoy it, play hard and well, and leave without any regrets.
But part of Auckland City's function at this tournament is not just to give a good account of themselves, but to show young footballers back home that it is possible for someone from New Zealand to play on the global stage. They have a broader purpose and a desire to reinforce the positive community work they are already performing.
In March, the new Club World Cup trophy toured through Mount Roskill, a suburb of just under 30,000 people to the south of Kiwitea Street. Many City players, including Kilkolly, are part of coaching programmes in local schools. Not to find the next elite players, necessarily, but to provide mentorship, promote healthy lifestyles and inclusivity.
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In partnership with local government and charitable foundations, the club are also raising funding for a new NZ$6million (£2.7m; $3.6m) all-weather surface and other facilities that will serve local children from a multi-cultural region facing socio-economic challenges.
For Kilkolly and the other City players, this is the legacy aspect of their Club World Cup participation.
'That's 100 per cent it — we're looking at what we're leaving behind and Auckland football is going to be in a better position than when we started,' he says.
'You're not going to see the return on some of these things in the next 10 or 20 years, but it's about us as a side doing our part in history. There's going to be an all-weather pitch built at Mount Roskill and kids will be able to play football through the winter. Before you know it, there might be kids from Mount Roskill making the first team at Auckland City.
'There is a greater good here. We are the working-class team at this Club World Cup, showing that you can come from any sort of area in life.'
One of Kilkolly's team-mates, Michael den Heijer, fell into football as a young boy. During a childhood that he says 'had some interesting times', the sport provided sanctuary.
'My family life was unsettled,' Den Heijer says. 'My parents separated when I was 12 and football was just this safe space where I could get away from some of the issues at home.'
A ball-playing defender or midfielder, Den Heijer's journey through the sport has taken him a long way.
When The Athletic speaks to him, the team have arrived in the U.S. and settled into their hotel in Philadelphia, where they were to play a tournament warm-up friendly against the B team of local MLS side Philadelphia Union.
Den Heijer is 29. He was a New Zealand youth international and was in the squad for the 2013 Under-17 World Cup in Sweden. In his later teens, he successfully trialled with Kashiwa Reysol in Japan, but struggled to adapt to the culture and language. He returned home, where routes into professional football are almost non-existent.
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'It must be one of the hardest careers to pick,' he says. 'In New Zealand, it must be harder than becoming a heart surgeon.'
He is joking, of course, but footballing's heartlands were certainly a long way away.
Still, Den Heijer made that leap of faith again, setting off for Europe this time, on the strength of vague promises from strangers.
'It's very hard to get an opportunity, but there was one on LinkedIn where some agent told me he had a club for me in Germany, near Berlin, and that I should come and take a look,' he says.
'I remember turning up to the hostel where they wanted me to sleep and there were people on the doorstep who looked like they had been taking heroin, and the room inside was a shambles. I called the agent and said, 'Sorry, this is not for me. Can you take me to the train station?'.'
He travelled by rail to the Netherlands, where he would spend three years at second-tier NEC Nijmegen. But he would never make a senior appearance for them and was released in 2019. Spells with SV DFS in the sixth division of Dutch football and FC Kleve, a German fifth-tier side, followed.
Den Heijer has psychological scars from that period. The lowest points were desolate and full of perilous financial insecurity, exacerbated eventually by the Covid-19 pandemic.
'You need ultimate self-belief to succeed in Europe and that's something I lacked,' he says. 'I didn't have a sporting mentor in my life and I was over there by myself. The toughest moments were hard. Being released by NEC, but then not having anywhere to go because I hadn't featured in many games… I had no money. They were really, really tough times.'
Den Heijer took jobs where he could, including selling ornamental trees for a company run by one of DFS's sponsors.
'The town makes money from growing those trees and selling them all over Europe,' he explains. 'I would be standing in nursery fields, tying trees to bamboo fences and then putting them in trucks. I thought, 'What am I doing? This is not my dream'. But when I thought about coming back to New Zealand, that would be like admitting I'd failed.'
The option was soon taken away.
Lockdowns prevented Den Heijer and his partner, who he met during those days in the Netherlands, from travelling to New Zealand until March 2021. But when he did get back, it was a turning point.
He signed initially with Auckland United, his current team's local rivals, before joining City in 2023. In the period since, he has helped win the domestic National League once, and OFC Champions League three times, and is now participating in his third Club World Cup.
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Away from football, he is a program co-ordinator for a not-for-profit organisation called the Life Changer Foundation, which provides preventative health and well-being programmes to young people. Reading between the lines, it seems a way of providing youngsters with support that, years ago when Den Heijer's career was falling apart, he could have used himself.
'It just clicked,' he says. 'Now I have a team that I look after, delegating who goes into which school. I work about 30 hours a week. Some days I'm in the schools facilitating, and then I'll head off to training after school finishes, four nights a week.
'I'm leaving home at 7.30am, then straight to training afterwards. Some days, I do coaching as part of the Mount Roskill Foundation.
'Young people are not taught some of the skills that are needed to cope with life's challenges. When I think about some of the tougher moments I had as a teenager, they came about because my mom was in such a tough place after the separation from my dad.'
Den Heijer seems in a good place now. He's good-humoured and quick to laugh. He admits to being 'nervous and excited' about the tournament, but it seems more like a reward for having survived the adversity that he has encountered, rather than a final challenge. His father, his stepmother and partner will all be in the States, travelling from game to game to support City. His mother will be back home in front of the TV, bursting with pride.
'She's always been a quiet watcher,' he adds. 'She'll just send me a text before the games: 'Run like the wind'.'