Chris Wood will NOT be joining Bruno Guimaraes (Brazil), Kieran Trippier (England) and Fabian Schar (Switzerland) at the World Cup Finals in Qatar later this year.
New Zealand faced Costa Rica in last night’s decisive intercontinental play-off, but lost 1-0 after several big decisions went against them following an early strike from former Arsenal forward Joel Campbell.
Wood was named Man of the Match by several reporters in attendance, offering real leadership throughout, a constant physical presence and being hugely unlucky not to come out on the winning side.
He had a goal disallowed – which many felt should’ve stood following a VAR review – and saw his side go down to 10 men in the second half, allowing Costa Rica to see out a 1-0 win despite the Kiwis having 15 shots to 4 and 67% possession.
The former Burnley man thought he’d drawn the All Whites level with this strike, however VAR replays (shown below) left on-field officials believing they’d missed a foul in the build up:
This now means all 32 teams for Qatar have now been confirmed, leaving the line up looking like this ahead of the group stages:
Olly – we KNOW you’re struggling when you use “Newcastle United”, “star” and “Chris Wood” all in the same sentence.
Daveys **** mate(Quote)