All Whites star Ryan Thomas eyes World Cup after fixing his knees and making football fun again

Thursday, 4 September 2025

There were times when Ryan Thomas told All Whites coach Darren Bazeley he couldn’t see himself playing for his country again.

It hurt for him to feel that way, but as he battled to overcome a succession of knee injuries and get his professional football career in the Netherlands back on track, the prospect of adding national team duty to his workload seemed too much.

So “it was a little bit of a personal win,” for the 30-year-old from Te Puke when he was able to give Bazeley a call and say “I’m comfortable coming back and giving it another shot,” starting with the Soccer Ashes matches against Australia’s Socceroos this Friday in Canberra and next Tuesday in Auckland.

Between his 19th and most recent All Whites appearance, against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin in November 2019, and March this year, Thomas missed almost twice as many league matches for Dutch clubs PSV Eindhoven and PEC Zwolle as he played.

But since making his first league start in 15 months in early March – just before the All Whites booked their place at next year’s FIFA World Cup in North America – he has now started 12 of PEC Zwolle’s last 13 matches, playing a full 90 minutes in seven of them.

Thomas’ journey to being in the best physical shape he feels he has ever been in his career began with the realisation that his body hadn’t been constructed properly.

“We found out – this is about three years ago – that my kneecaps on both sides were sitting too high in the joint,” he said on Wednesday from Canberra.

“It's not really common. The specialist that I went to see in London, he had done (the surgery to fix it) a few times. Not on a footballer before, but he'd done it on a few rugby players and a few basketballers and volleyballers – (sports) where you do a lot of jumping.

“Normally around 26, 27 years old, you start feeling problems and start getting fluid (in your knees) – basically what I was having.”

If you’ve read this far, you already know there was a solution. But if you’re squeamish, you might want to scroll past the quotes as to what it was, and just rest assured that all is good now.

“You basically pull the kneecap down and then reset it on that position,” Thomas said.

“You kind of break your shin bone, pull the patella tendon down, so the patella comes down, and then, with two screws, just set it on the shin bone, again, where it's supposed to be.”

After he’d gone under the knife, Thomas had to adapt to his new body, “because it changes the way you run and how your muscles work – your hamstrings, your quads, your hips”.

“I had a lot of niggles with that sort of stuff the first few months, but since the beginning of this year – the last six, seven months – I've had no problems whatsoever.

“My knees are completely fine. I can go to the gym and I can put some weights on the bar. I don't have to just do body weight stuff.

“I'm where I should have been when I was 22.”

It’s hard to not to hear that last bit and wonder what might have been for a player who left New Zealand as a teenager to join PEC Zwolle in 2013, then scored two goals as they stunned the Netherlands’ most famous club, Ajax, in the 2014 Dutch Cup final.

Four years later, he secured a move to another member of the country’s big three, PSV, only to suffer the second major knee injury of his career in his first week there. When he was released after four injury-ridden seasons, PEC Zwolle gave him a lifeline and he is now their first-team captain.

Thomas isn’t dwelling on what-ifs and what-might-have-beens.

Right now he’s overcome with excitement at “being part of a group of guys from New Zealand, and hopefully creating some history again” at the World Cup in North America next year, with this month’s matches – where he isn’t on any sort of minutes restriction – an important stepping stone.

“We had a training session (on Tuesday) and we almost didn't do anything (while getting over travel), but I had a smile on my face the whole day.

“I'm just buzzing to be here, being back with the boys. I know a lot of the guys. A lot of staff I don't really know, but it's been good to get to know everyone, have a chat with everyone, hear how everyone's been going.”

While Thomas is in a healthy place now, there have been plenty of times over the past six years where he has done it tough and even some where he has wondered whether he would be better walking away from football altogether.

“There were a lot of tears shed. I’ve had a lot of talks with my wife – what’s the plan? What do you think?

“She was always saying to me, ‘I can't picture you stopping and doing something else at this moment’.

“I'm very grateful for what she did for me in those periods, but it was tough mentally coming back every day, knowing you're going to have a problem today, or you're going to fall out of training, or something's not going to be good.

“It was tough. That's made me a better person. It's also made me a stronger person. It’s made me play a lot different now.

“I don't really have stress on the pitch. I’m just happy to be on the pitch. That makes football a lot more pleasant than what it has been. There's not really any pressure for me any more.

“I'm just really in a good place.“

All Whites – Soccer Ashes

Squad

Goalkeepers: Max Crocombe, Henry Gray, Oli Sail

Defenders: Callan Elliot, Tim Payne, Tyler Bindon, Michael Boxall, Finn Surman, Francis de Vries, James McGarry

Midfielders: Joe Bell, Elijah Just, Ben Old, Alex Rufer, Sarpreet Singh, Marko Stamenić, Ryan Thomas

Forwards: Kosta Barbarouses, Luke Brooke-Smith, Callum McCowatt, Jesse Randall, Logan Rogerson, Chris Wood

Fixtures (NZ time)

Friday, September 5, 9.45pm: v Socceroos; GIO Stadium, Canberra

Tuesday, September 9, 7pm: v Socceroos; Go Media Stadium, Auckland

Last five head-to-head results

October 2023: All Whites 0-2 Socceroos; Gtech Community Stadium, London

September 2022: All Whites 0-2 Socceroos; Eden Park, Auckland

September 2022: All Whites 0-1 Socceroos; Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane

June 2011: All Whites 0-3 Socceroos; Adelaide Oval

May 2010: All Whites 1-2 Socceroos; Melbourne Cricket Ground