How former All White Declan Edge helped produce six members of New Zealand’s 2026 FIFA World Cup squad

Sunday, 14 June 2026

Six players in the All Whites’ 2026 FIFA World Cup squad all have the same mentor in common.

Former All White Declan Edge worked with Ryan Thomas in Bay of Plenty and Hamilton during his first foray into youth coaching.

He then worked with Matt Garbett, Eli Just, Callum McCowatt, Nando Pijnaker, and Marko Stamenić at the Olé Football Academy in Porirua.

Edge’s success in producing All Whites-quality players raises the question: Has NZ Football missed a trick not making more use of him?

The football careers of six All Whites at this year’s FIFA World Cup – Matt Garbett, Eli Just, Callum McCowatt, Nando Pijnaker, Marko Stamenić and Ryan Thomas – were significantly shaped by former All White Declan Edge, who has returned to New Zealand after seven years coaching in Sweden and wants to help NZ Football plot a way forward with regard to youth development. Andrew Voerman reports.

Declan Edge knew what was coming long before anyone else.

Wading into a debate on Twitter, now known as X, which this writer had a hand in starting, the former All White wanted to reassure those frustrated with the team’s performances at the 2017 Confederations Cup that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Referencing Ryan Thomas – an early protégé of his in Bay of Plenty and Waikato and the All Whites’ standout player in Russia that June – he made the following statement, which seems eerily prophetic almost nine years on.

“I have lots more Ryan Thomas’s currently coming through,” Edge wrote. “Ryan was here at Xmas ask him he will tell you himself”.

Edge was talking about the teenagers he was coaching at the Ole Football Academy in Porirua, an institution founded in 1997 by Dave Wilson, who is still the chairman today.

“It was very clear to me,” Edge said, “because I knew how good Ryan was. With the kids that were coming through Olé at that time, it was like these kids are better, and they've got better work going on, in a better environment.”

It took nine years, but this writer did ask Thomas about that period this March, when he was home with the All Whites, preparing for a FIFA World Cup campaign that is now just two days away from starting.

“I came back and ended up training at Olé for a couple days and I trained with all the boys,” he said. “You could see there was a high level of footballer there.”

“The boys” included five players born between 1999 and 2002, so then aged between 16 and 18, who have gone on to be part of this year’s World Cup squad – Matt Garbett, Eli Just, Callum McCowatt, Nando Pijanker and Marko Stamenić.

A sixth, born slightly earlier in 1998 – Owen Parker-Price – would have been the next midfielder up, while a seventh, born in 1999 – Dalton Wilkins – might have been in the frame at fullback if not for a torrid time with injuries.

One Sunday afternoon in May 2018, those seven players were part of the same matchday squad for Olé’s Central League partner club Western Suburbs, with an eighth future international – Somalia’s Mohamed Awad, then 24 – alongside them.

Garbett and Awad both scored hat-tricks in a 9-0 romp over Havelock North Wanderers at Guthrie Park.

Told half his team’s 16-man squad that day had gone on to play senior international football, Garbett said it was a “surreal” piece of trivia.

As a comparison, the Wellington Phoenix reserve teams playing in the Central League that season as Wellington United never had more than four such players, most often two or three.

When several Olé players moved north to Auckland to play for Eastern Suburbs in the national league the following summer under former All White Danny Hay, who would later give many of them their national team debuts when he was head coach, they linked up with Tim Payne and Andre de Jong, both already capped, and Kelvin Kalua, another who one day would be.

In the national league final in March 2019, where Suburbs beat Team Wellington 3-0 thanks to a McCowatt hat-trick, eight starters were past or future All Whites, with Awad on the bench making it nine future senior internationals in a squad of 18.

Edge assisted Hay that summer and reflecting on what the players in some of those lineups in 2018 and 2019 at those two clubs had gone on to achieve, he said: “I did too good of a job. That's unbelievable. Like, how could that possibly happen?”

Former Phoenix legend Paul Ifill came up against the Olé boys while playing for Wairarapa United in the Central League and Hawke’s Bay United in the national league.

“I absolutely hated playing against them,” he said, “because you barely got a kick. What is good now is seeing what they've done, because I remember at the time thinking ‘Why can we not get near these little bastards?’

“It was really strange at the time, because they were so young, so small, but so technical, but to see where they've actually gone on to, you go, 'Okay, alright, well, fair enough. We actually did quite well to hang in there with them.”’

Edge’s approach to working with young footballers – helping to create players who want the ball and who want to link up with their team-mates, a style of play most football fans want to see – is based around making things fun and giving them the freedom to express themselves, stripping away factors that cause them to worry and have fear and not perform at their best, such as an over-emphasis on results.

“We are playing a game of football,' was how he started explaining it to Stuff, putting emphasis on the words “playing” and “game”.

“Nowhere in that sentence is the word winning. Winning and high performance are not related at all, they're not even close cousins, but high-performing individuals will always move towards winning.

“It's a separation of those two things. When I'm talking to coaches around the country at the moment, I'm saying understand the human condition, understand the nervous system, understand how all these things operate, and if you can get these things right, then you're more likely to get high performance and creativity, and I think instinctively, I was putting those things in place at Olé very early on.”

Just, who has just had the best season of his career with Motherwell in the Scottish Premiership, said Edge taught him “almost everything I learned about football”.

“How to conduct myself on the field; mentally – how to handle setbacks and ups and downs. It all came from him and his teaching, so I owe him a lot. I think he prepared me in ways I didn’t even realise I would need for my career when I went overseas.

“He was just such an interesting guy. He was so outside the box, had so many good ideas and thought-provoking things. We still keep in touch and I always enjoy talking to him.”

McCowatt said the young players working under Edge at Olé “were quite good at pushing each other”.

“I don't have a brother, but my friends have had brothers, and they're so competitive, but they also want the best for each other. We were almost like this, where every day we were pushing each other in training and really being aggressive at each other. These were the sort of things that kind of propelled us forward in our football careers.”

McCowatt said the group benefited from Edge allowing them to be themselves: “That was great for us, that we could grow as ourselves, because otherwise you're just making robots. If you're trying to make each player something that they're not, then you're just going to have robots come out of the academy.

“I'm different to Eli. I'm different to Nando. Nando's different to Ryan. Ryan's different to Marko. We all have our own playing styles and he didn't restrict us to being robots. He really let us bring our own ideas.”

All Whites head coach Darren Bazeley agrees: “They’re all different. They’ve all got high football IQ. They’ve all got great knowledge of the game and they’ve all got this love for football and they all want football to be played a certain way as well.

“What that core group have done – it’s definitely an advantage for us that we’ve got players that are best mates and that grew up playing together and now they’re in professional environments, they’re All Whites and they’re going to a World Cup together.”

The five Olé products at the World Cup have been ever-present in the All Whites since making their debuts – Just, McCowatt and Pijnaker in November 2019 and Garbett and Stamenic in October 2021, later than they likely would have had it not been for the Covid-19 pandemic.

Thomas was there in November 2019, before spending most of the next six years battling to get his body right after a series of injuries. No-one has been happier having him back in the fold since last September than the five players who once looked to him as a guide.

The Olé influence on the All Whites can be heard in their trainings and games, when they use the word “shiver” to signal the need to counter-press – to try to win the ball back soon after it has been lost – a trigger word Edge first used back when he was working with Thomas.

Just and Stamenić are certain to start when the All Whites begin their World Cup campaign against Iran in Los Angeles on Monday night (kickoff 1pm Tuesday NZ time) while Garbett looks highly likely to join them, after a strong showing against England last weekend. Thomas is expected to be used off the bench in what will be his first match since early May, after recovering from a hamstring injury. McCowatt could join him, while Pijnaker will likely have to bide his time as the fourth-choice centre back.

Olé has gone through a succession of technical directors since Edge left for Sweden in 2019, and while it remains a key player on the New Zealand football scene, along with Wests, it has not been able to replicate the fertile period it had with Edge at the helm, where it produced a number of professionals and age-group internationals beyond those named here.

At the same time, the young players who now walk its halls can still find inspiration in the All Whites who once did the same. Said Wilson: “I get an absolute kick out of the nine and 10 and 11-year-olds coming up the stairs and stopping halfway up, and going, ‘Oh my goodness, did you see who I passed going up the stairs’.

“That sends a little shiver down my spine. They stop, and they go, Marko's on the wall here, or Eli. These are role models that sit in there in their little heads – it's just wonderful seeing it.”

Edge has been back in New Zealand since the end of last year and is looking to return to working in youth development, though he doesn’t see himself taking charge at one club again.

“The world that I’ve been in for 20 years, where I’m doing this work, and then every week you’re having people decide whether that was good work or not, based on a result – that’s not a very nice place to be, it’s quite stressful.

“The question that I'm trying to figure out is how can I be of use to New Zealand Football, and how aware are they of how maybe things aren't going as well as they should be in certain areas.”

When you look at Edge’s contribution to the All Whites’ World Cup squad, it certainly feels as though he could be of greater use, especially as there have only been three players born since 2003 – a cohort now as old as 22 – who have made their national team debuts to date.

When you also consider his work with current All Whites players started a decade ago, it’s also fair to ask if New Zealand Football has missed a trick not making more use of him already.

Thomas certainly thinks there’s a place for him, though he admits it’s not something he’s discussed with his mentor.

'When you’ve got the track record Declan has, it's hard to see why he's not involved, regardless of what job that might be.

“I'm not really sure what discussions have been had between New Zealand Football and Declan, but I'm obviously very biased.

“I would love to see him be involved with New Zealand Football. When he's got the level of players that he's produced, and you see how many guys have been around the All Whites’ first XI, it's quite remarkable.”

Sam Wilkinson, a Football Ferns assistant who has spent time coaching in the academies of Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion in England, and also worked at Melville from 2016 to 2022, believes Edge absolutely has more to offer.

“Players obviously have a huge input on their own journey, and you can't always attribute it just to one person, but what he did [at Olé], and the influence he had on these players, it can't be by accident.

“As a country, we don't have enough resource and enough high-level thinkers that we can afford to ignore something like that and not tap into that. There has to be some elements of what he did that we can try and use on a grander scale. There's too much that came out of what he did there … to just disregard his approach.”

NZ Football chief executive Andrew Pragnell said “I’m going to go out on a limb here” – referring to the love-him-or-hate-him reputation Edge has gained from being outspoken and a strident iconoclast – before declaring: “I’m a Declan fan. I’ve had the privilege to catch up with him a number of times in this role and there is absolutely no doubt that he’s achieved some incredible things. He clearly has to take significant credit for a lot of the development of some of the national team players. I personally like the way he challenges what I call orthodox thinking.”

“The question in terms of missing a trick is a really interesting one. The question is – was it possible to systematise, effectively, what he did at a national scale, or was it some inherent skills and capabilities that he held? I've had that conversation with him and it's one we need to continue, but without a doubt, he should watch this team – and I know he will watch this team – and look on and feel really proud.”

'We've got to figure out how we harness that more,” he added, when pushed on Edge being back home and wanting to get stuck in.

Just said in San Diego this week the five Olé products in the All Whites’ World Cup squad probably don’t stop to reflect on their journey over the past decade “as much as we should.”

“I’m sure when we look back, we will probably appreciate it more – just how special it was.”

Being part of a history-making World Cup campaign could be the most special part yet.