The intrusive thought All Whites veteran Michael Boxall will confront before facing Egypt at the FIFA World Cup
Sunday, 21 June 2026
Michael Boxall is the oldest member of the All Whites’ 2026 FIFA World Cup squad.
He turns 38 in August, having started his professional club career 15 years ago.
His first World Cup now takes him to Vancouver, the city where that club career began, with Major League Soccer’s Whitecaps.
Against Egypt there on Sunday evening (Monday NZ time) he is set to be tasked with shutting down star attackers Mo Salah and Omar Marmoush.
Michael Boxall will be 37 years and 307 days old when the All Whites face Egypt in a FIFA World Cup blockbuster on Sunday evening in Vancouver (1pm Monday NZ time) – the city where his professional career began 15 years ago.
Only 19 players at the tournament are older – nine of them goalkeepers – but there will be many more than that who aren’t anywhere close to being in as good physical shape as the veteran Kiwi centre back is.
Boxall has put in the hard yards and then some to still be going strong two months out from his 38th birthday, working closely with Sunz Singh, the All Whites’ elite strength and conditioning coach, since 2017 – two years before Singh joined the national team set-up.
An adductor injury – his first of any kind for almost five years – disrupted his Major League Soccer campaign with Minnesota United ahead of the World Cup and had him contemplating his football mortality.
But Boxall was already well aware “most of the sand is in the bottom of the hourglass” with regard to his playing career.
And, as he also told Stuff during a sit-down interview recently, he has a weird habit he can’t seem to shake with regard to thinking about his fitness.
“I always knew I’m not immune to any kind of thing.
“Pretty much before every game or training, literally every single time, I’m like ‘today could be the day my Achilles or my knee goes’, but for 15 years I’ve been pretty lucky.
“This was only my second injury that’s made me miss any time during my career, so it’s not something I’m used to, but I'm not superhuman, where I don't get affected by these things.”
Boxall said the intrusive thoughts were “something I literally only think during the warm-up, and then once I start training it just disappears out of my head”.
One way or another, the end of a career that began at Auckland clubs Ellerslie, Three Kings United and Central United and Mt Albert Grammar School – where Boxall had 1982 World Cup assistant Kevin Fallon as a coach – is approaching.
He was also head boy at MAGS – in 2006, when this writer was a year 10 student at the same school – and recalled of those days: “Kevin’s style, his approach to coaching,” famously robust, “really brought the man out of you, when you were 13 or 14 years old”.
After graduating, Boxall headed across the Pacific for four years of college at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
He has memories of lying on his couch there, trying to stay awake, as the All Whites beat Bahrain to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, which was an even harder watch due to the time difference between the United States and South Africa.
Boxall said college life in California “was pretty wild”.
“I look back and look at some of the things we did and I don't know how I became a professional footballer after going through all that. A lot of the party life, what you see in the movies – it’s a good time, but not conducive to becoming a professional athlete.”
Yet here he is, a decade and a half on, 358 professional league matches later – a tally only a handful of Kiwis have surpassed – and 64 All Whites caps later – a tally that has him fifth-equal alongside Vaughan Coveny on the all-time list, until Sunday.
Boxall made his international debut against China in March 2011, having been called up by Ricki Herbert late as a replacement for legendary centre back Ryan Nelsen. At the time, the All Whites were still riding the wave generated by their undefeated World Cup campaign nine months earlier.
He first became a regular starter under Anthony Hudson in the 2018 World Cup cycle, then had a smaller role under Danny Hay in the 2022 World Cup cycle, but has fought back to be current coach Darren Bazeley’s fifth-most used player, defying his age.
The All Whites’ World Cup opener against Iran on Monday was Boxall’s sixth match starting alongside Finn Surman – a centre back partnership with a 15-year age gap.
He held off a strong challenge from Tyler Bindon – two years younger than Surman – to make his World Cup debut as a starter in Los Angeles, then reflected on Instagram after: “How did I get here?” In part by scoring the goal – his first for his country – that put the All Whites ahead in the Oceania qualifying final.
Coming out of the 2-2 draw at SoFi Stadium, the All Whites’ attack was being lauded and their defence was being put under the microscope, but Bazeley isn’t the type to make sudden changes and the sense is the same back four is likely to start against Egypt.
After the All Whites’ penultimate training before that match in San Diego on Friday local time, Boxall said: “Obviously we want to tighten up. There's a lot we can tighten up. ‘
“That could be a product of how we want to play. We want to try to spread them and move the ball like what we've shown, but on the flip side, if we give the ball away, we're a little bit vulnerable, so we're just looking at ways we can tighten that up.
“Getting a clean sheet would go a long way for us on Sunday.”
Star Egyptian attackers Mo Salah and Omar Marmoush are expected to give the All Whites’ defence a much tougher examination than Iran did, but Boxall is no stranger to facing big names.
He came up against Brazil great Ronaldinho at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo at the 2017 Confederations Cup in Russia, and Argentine legend Lionel Messi in Major League Soccer in 2025.
Boxall said stopping Salah and Marmoush at BC Place was going to be a job for the entire team: “We’ve just got to stay as compact as we can and just limit the space, similar to what we did in the England prep match. If we can keep our distances similar to that, but also take the positives with the ball from Monday night, then we should be on our way.”.
“We've set the bar for how we want to play,” he added, looking forward to a match where a win would put his side within touching distance of the knockout stage, a potential outcome that should make for a massive occasion.
“We want to be super positive, but one performance and one point isn't going to get us out of the group, and we need to really back that up and really take it a bit higher than what we did in LA.”