Some of them traveled for 35 hours. That’s how long it takes to get from Sandringham, New Zealand - a suburb just outside Auckland with a population of 12,000 - to Cincinnati, Ohio. There were all sorts of different routes. Some of them stopped in Sydney and then went through Dallas. Others had layovers elsewhere. No, there are no direct flights.
But they convened all the same, a group of just under 30 fans and parents, all supporting Auckland City FC - bleary-eyed and tired-legged - in the 2025 Club World Cup.
You’ve probably heard of this club by this point, even if you never had before. For some, they are the measuring stick of why this competition is imperfect. After all, they shipped 10 goals to Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich in last weekend’s CWC opener. They are a semi-pro team, who legally cannot make more than around $90 per week for travel expenses.
But the players and fans themselves don’t care. They know they probably won’t win a game. It’s not a guarantee that they will even find the back of the net. Instead, this is a story of intolerably long plane journeys and personal sacrifice to either play or watch football - even if that means spending thousands of dollars to come out on the wrong end of a scoreline.
“Because it's such a big event, and it may be the only one we ever get to go to, a lot of people spent a lot of money and sacrificed to actually get here and make it happen,” Blair Shaw, an avid Auckland City fan, told GOAL.
