New Zealand vs Australia prediction: WORLD: Friendly International betting tips on match 2022-09-24 02:00.
For the second time in four days, New Zealand and Australia will celebrate 100 years of football history together with the final of two centenary friendlies, with hosting duties swapped as the two sides move to Auckland’s Eden Park for the All Whites’ first home fixture since 2017! It will also be a momentous weekend for the venue as the 50,000-seater welcomes senior international football for the first time in its 122-year history, less than 18 hours after the completion of the Bledisloe Cup between the New Zealand and Australia rugby union teams.
Owing to their unsuccessful World Cup Qualification campaign and their FA reportedly refusing to schedule loss-making friendlies during the November window, this appears likely to be New Zealand’s final match until at least late March. It could be a farewell for manager Danny Hay too after 20 games at the helm with his contract expiring next month, as with four-successive games without a goal (D1, L3) it remains to be seen whether Hay is the man to take New Zealand forward.
The presence of 2006 World Cup mastermind manager Guus Hiddink – who had current boss Graham Arnold by his side during Australia’s finest World Cup finals campaign – was not enough to inspire the Socceroos to a commanding performance in the reverse H2H just a few days ago. Hiddink himself conceded that New Zealand deserved a draw rather than the 1-0 defeat Australia inflicted upon them, though nonetheless, it completed a four-game Australian winning streak, all decided either by penalties or a one-goal margin.
Scraping past a non-World Cup participant 64 places below them in the FIFA rankings must be considered underwhelming by Arnold, who admitted Australia “lost the physical battle” and on another day could have conceded twice in the opening 15 minutes. Arnold is expected to rest some of, if not all, of his European-based players to ease their workload and instead select a wealth of domestic and Asian club players, which could result in a rusty performance considering Australia’s A-League is in its off-season between May and October.
Players to watch: All-Whites captain Chris Wood is their last player to score on home soil, scoring a hat-trick against the Solomon Islands (W 6-1) more than five years ago! Australia are expected to hand more minutes to Melbourne City striker Jamie Maclaren, who was the Socceroos’ leading goalscorer in the 2022 World Cup Qualification campaign (seven).
Hot stat: Australia have won just two of the last ten H2Hs played in New Zealand (D4, L4).