Were you looking for a symbol to exemplify the gulf that lies between Auckland City Football Club and their rivals at the Club World Cup, you would find it at Kiwitea Street, the team’s home ground.
Hard up against the Sandringham suburb it serves, the roofs of the surrounding city’s single-storey bungalows are visible from the one enclosed stand, and to the north there is nothing but the modest clubhouse and some incidental shrubbery to impede views of the Sky Tower’s lonely tenancy in the distant skyline. This, certainly, is no towering football cathedral of the kind Real Madrid and Manchester City call home.
