Ben Waine's Journey to the World Cup: From Relegation to Redemption

Ben Waine’s World Cup journey did not begin with a plane ticket or a squad list. It began on the outside looking in, not so long ago, when he could not even get into Port Vale’s matchday squad.

“It has been a tough season. I’m not going to lie,” he told Sky Sports. There were weeks when his name was nowhere near the team sheet. No minutes. No rhythm. Just training sessions and long walks back to the car park. “It sucked in the moment but it was probably one of the best things to happen to me. I was really able to work on my game.”

Port Vale went down. The club’s season ended in relegation. Yet in the middle of that grim campaign, the 25-year-old New Zealand forward quietly flipped his own script. Eight goals, a rediscovered joy in playing, and one night against Sunderland that changed the way he looked at himself.

That FA Cup tie in March still glows in his memory. Waine rose to meet a cross and guided a looping header back across the goalkeeper, the sort of finish that looks improvised in the moment. It wasn’t.

“It made a tough season a little bit more bearable,” he said. Bearable, and something else: proof that the lonely hours had been worth it.

The grind behind the goal

The Sunderland winner did not come from nowhere. It came from repetition.

Day after day, Waine stayed behind with individual coach Simon Ireland. Just him, a bag of balls, and a very specific plan.

“Literally, every day we would work on one or two types of finish, just focusing on the technique,” he explained. Stripped-back sessions, the kind that remove the noise and expose the truth of a striker’s craft. Plant foot. Body shape. Contact. Again. And again.

He wanted composure. A finish he could “go to without thinking,” something so ingrained that pressure could not shake it. “It gave me real purpose. I knew what I was working towards. Even when things were not going well, I had that to work on. It made me relax a bit more.”

That relaxation mattered. Before, he admits, he was snatching at chances. “Because I was so desperate to do well, I was rushing actions in front of goal.” The technical work helped, but so did the mental side. He started visualising finishes, playing them out in his head away from the pitch.

One image stuck: a header, arcing back across the goalkeeper. The exact Sunderland goal.

“The second finishing drill we didn’t do a huge amount of but I did a lot of visualising of it off the field as well. And the one goal that I actually pictured was that Sunderland goal, the kind of loopy header back across the goalkeeper. I had actually visualised it.

“It does not seem like one you would practise when you are just working on the technique of hitting the ball but that action of going across the goalkeeper is one we had worked on and it just became a bit more natural. It was really cool to see that come off.”

Then came the celebration. Waine, from a Newcastle-supporting family, turned towards the travelling Sunderland fans and threw up the unmistakable Alan Shearer salute. One arm up, simple and sharp. A childhood homage, delivered in front of their fiercest rivals.

“It was just awesome. I had never seen the stadium like that before. It was absolutely bouncing,” he recalled.

Eight goals for Port Vale followed in total, a personal revival in the middle of a collective struggle. “I kind of took it with both hands. It sounds silly but I actually enjoyed playing my football again.”

Enjoyment had not come easily since he left Wellington Phoenix for Plymouth Argyle in January 2023.

The brutal jump to England

The move to Devon was a leap into the unknown. Plymouth were in League One when he arrived, a club on the rise and a league with its own unforgiving rhythm.

“I knew the jump to League One would be big. Not technically, but in terms of intensity and physicality, the adjustment was massive,” he said. The pace. The duels. The relentlessness of English football outside the top flight. He felt it all.

Then Plymouth went up.

“And then you get this amazing promotion and you are playing Championship football all of a sudden. It almost came too quickly.”

He still found moments. A couple of goals at Championship level, including one at Elland Road against Leeds United, the sort of stage most players from New Zealand grow up watching on television. But minutes were scarce. He went to Mansfield on loan in search of more. That, bluntly, failed.

“That just did not work out at all.”

The easy option sat 11,000 miles away.

“I promised myself that however hard it got I was not going to go back. That would have been the easy option. I stuck it out and have come out of it as a better player and a better person.”

That stubbornness has carried him to the brink of a World Cup.

From the Olympics to the ‘104 Super Bowls’

Waine has already stood on big stages. Two Olympic Games with New Zealand, including a game against France at the Velodrome that he calls “awesome” to be part of. But this is different. The 2026 World Cup, what Gianni Infantino has grandly dubbed “104 Super Bowls,” is another planet entirely.

“It is going to be another level up,” Waine said. He has already felt a hint of that climb.

In March, he scored in a 4-1 win over Chile, a result that turned a few heads. Yet the All Whites have also taken their lumps: defeats to Colombia, Ecuador and Finland, then recent losses to Haiti and England. The standard has risen. So has the learning curve.

“You have to realise that when we are stepping up and playing harder opposition, we cannot expect the results to be perfect. We have had to mentally adjust.”

His own role may need adjusting too. Waine calls himself “a running nine,” a striker who wants to press, chase, and dart in behind. New Zealand, though, already have a centrepiece in that position: Chris Wood, their record scorer and talisman.

There is no illusion about that. “Because there will be no ousting Wood,” as Waine puts it in essence. So he has broadened his game.

At Port Vale, he drifted left at times and found it suited him. “At the start, I was a bit hesitant but I see it as a really positive thing. It just felt really natural. I am actually playing on the left, on the right and down the middle now. It adds another dynamic, which should help my case.”

Versatility as a ticket onto the biggest stage.

Learning from a master finisher

If you are going to share a dressing room with Chris Wood, you may as well study him.

What stands out? Not power. Not aerial dominance. Patience.

“As a striker, you can barely touch the ball all game but when that one chance comes, you had better take it. He has proven time and time again that he can do that.”

One chance. That is how Waine now frames his own ambition.

“There is going to be that opportunity to be the hero. You just want that one moment.”

New Zealand’s group offers both danger and possibility: Iran first, then Egypt, then Belgium. No one expects the All Whites to roll through it. But this is not the worst draw they could have received.

“My first thought was that we have actually got a chance here. Everyone sees us as underdogs but we want to take the opportunity that is in front of us. We want to get our first win on the world stage and we want to get out of the group for the first time ever.”

He smiles at the idea of swapping shirts with Mohamed Salah. “I am assuming there will be a few people pulling rank,” he said, fully aware of the queue that will form.

Maybe he leaves with something else instead. A goal. A moment. A celebration that echoes that night against Sunderland.

Another Alan Shearer salute? “Maybe it will reappear,” he said, laughing.

For now, the aim is simpler, and harder. “To squeeze the most out of my potential.” After what he calls “a lot of ups and downs,” he has finally positioned himself for that one World Cup chance he has spent years visualising.

When it comes, as he knows better than most, it just has to be taken.