Abby Erceg: Walking Away from the World Cup Dream
Abby Erceg has never been one to follow the script.
While the rest of New Zealand dreamed of a home World Cup, of packed stadiums and a fairy-tale farewell for one of the country’s greatest ever players, she walked away. Not from football. From the Ferns.
“It was a really tough decision,” she said. And it shows in every word that follows.
Walking away from the dream
For most players, a World Cup on home soil is the pinnacle. For Erceg, it became a test of principle.
“I spoke to a lot of people about it … because that’s the dream, isn’t it? You want to play a World Cup at home and it would have been towards the end of my international career as well, so kind of a perfect send-off.”
She knew exactly what she was turning down. The noise. The emotion. The final chapter written in front of friends and family.
“But it just didn’t sit right with me personally and professionally,” she said. “So I just had to put that first, rather than just doing something where my heart was never going to be in it. I didn’t think that was fair to the group or to myself to do something like that.”
Erceg let the decision breathe. She sat on it for a “long, long time”, testing whether she could live with the choice. When it stuck, she moved on.
Others have called it brave. She is reluctant to indulge that.
“It was brave in the sense that you have to go through with it, yes,” she admitted. “A lot of people would think, it’s a World Cup, you have to represent your country. But people also forget that I was in one of the best club environments in the world at North Carolina.
“We were so successful and it was very difficult to leave that environment, and go into an environment that I didn’t feel ... was serving me as a player. I had to make that decision for my career, in that way.”
What might have been
Her absence hung over the Ferns’ World Cup campaign, even if no one inside the camp would say it out loud.
New Zealand opened with a stirring 1-0 win over Norway, a night that felt like a watershed for the women’s game in the country. Then the momentum slipped. A 0-1 defeat to the Philippines. A 0-0 stalemate with Switzerland. One point from the final two matches. Group-stage elimination.
It’s not hard to wonder how different those tight, anxious minutes might have looked with Erceg’s 146 caps and 49 captaincies at the heart of the backline. That’s the thing about big decisions: they don’t just close doors, they leave questions behind.
A career built on conviction
Erceg has always been prepared to challenge the system around her. She retired from international football in 2017, then again in 2018, in protest at what she saw as New Zealand Football’s lack of support and resources for the women’s game. She came back for the 2019 Women’s World Cup, but the pattern was clear: this was a player who would not simply nod along.
While her commitment to the national setup fluctuated, her impact did not. Three World Cups. Three Olympic Games. The first Football Fern to reach 100 caps, finishing on 146. A long spell as captain. For a generation of New Zealand players, she was the standard.
Her club résumé is just as imposing. Three National Women’s Soccer League titles – 2016 with Western New York Flash, 2018 and 2019 with North Carolina Courage – underline her status in one of the toughest leagues in the world.
After 12 years in the United States, she took a different path again, joining Toluca in Mexico. It turned into one of the great adventures of her career.
“It was phenomenal,” she said. “The culture, the food, the people, the football, the excitement around it. Such an incredible country.”
Family, future, and a date with Chelsea
At 36, Erceg stands at another crossroads. The offers are there. The options are broad. The priorities have shifted.
“There are offers from everywhere,” she said. “In New Zealand, the A League, back in Mexico and clubs in America. But you get to that point in your career where family does become important.
“I’ve missed a lot of my family’s life. I’ve missed a lot of my nephews’ lives. So you do have to start taking those things into consideration.”
For now, her attention is locked on a very specific challenge: facing eight-time English champions Chelsea with a hastily assembled New Zealand select side, a group with only weeks of training together.
“It’s going to be a challenge – and that’s a polite word,” Erceg said.
This is no routine friendly. It is a measuring stick.
“It’s going to be a real education for a lot of people about where New Zealand football sits because we are playing one of the best female club teams in the world.
“We don’t have a lot of preparation so our work is going to be cut out for us. But at the same time, it’s good to have such a high calibre team in New Zealand and the exposure is great.”
So here she is again: leading, testing herself, holding a mirror up to the game in her country.
She turned down the World Cup at home because it didn’t feel right. Now she will stand in front of Chelsea, representing a version of New Zealand football she still believes can grow. The send-off might not have followed the storybook script.
But then, Abby Erceg has never been interested in anyone else’s script.
