Ben Waine's Journey from Port Vale to World Cup Aspirations

Ben Waine was never supposed to be here, not if you rewound the clock to the bleakest stretch of his season at Port Vale. Out of the squad. Out of the picture. A long way from what Gianni Infantino grandly calls the “104 Super Bowls” of the 2026 World Cup.

“It has been a tough season. I’m not going to lie,” he tells Sky Sports. There were weeks when his name did not even make the teamsheet. It hurt. It stung. But in the end, that exile became a turning point.

“It sucked in the moment but it was probably one of the best things to happen to me. I was really able to work on my game.”

From the fringes at Vale Park to the biggest stage in football: Waine’s route has not been glamorous. It has been graft. It has been repetition. It has been a 25-year-old New Zealander quietly rebuilding himself while the noise swirled elsewhere.

Relegation, redemption and a Sunderland header he’d already seen

Port Vale went down. There is no dressing that up. Yet in the middle of a relegation season, Waine found a moment that changed the way he felt about everything.

In March, against Sunderland in the FA Cup, he scored the winner. For a club fighting despair, it was a jolt of pure joy.

“It made a tough season a little bit more bearable,” he says.

That goal did not appear from nowhere. It came from hours on the training pitch with individual coach Simon Ireland. One-on-one, day after day.

“Literally, every day we would work on one or two types of finish, just focusing on the technique,” Waine explains. “It was about trying to find that composure, that finish that I could go to without thinking so it became instinct.”

The work gave him purpose. When he was not in the squad, he still had something to chase, a clear target. “Even when things were not going well, I had that to work on. It made me relax a bit more.”

Relaxing in front of goal had not come naturally.

“Because I was so desperate to do well, I was rushing actions in front of goal.”

So they stripped it back. Technique, repetition, and then something more subtle: visualisation. The Sunderland header, the one that looped back across the goalkeeper, had been living in his mind long before it rippled the net.

“The second finishing drill we didn’t do a huge amount of but I did a lot of visualising of it off the field as well. And the one goal that I actually pictured was that Sunderland goal, the kind of loopy header back across the goalkeeper. I had actually visualised it.”

On the face of it, it is not the sort of finish you’d expect to rehearse when you’re obsessing over clean contact and body shape. Yet the core movement – going across the goalkeeper, finding that far corner – was something they had drilled until it felt natural.

“It does not seem like one you would practise when you are just working on the technique of hitting the ball but that action of going across the goalkeeper is one we had worked on and it just became a bit more natural. It was really cool to see that come off.”

The celebration was pure instinct too. Waine, from a Newcastle-supporting family, wheeled away in front of the Sunderland fans with the full Alan Shearer salute, arm raised, a throwback on a modern afternoon.

“It was just awesome. I had never seen the stadium like that before. It was absolutely bouncing,” he recalls.

It was one of eight goals he scored for Port Vale, a respectable haul in a struggling side and a marker of how far he had come in a few months.

“I kind of took it with both hands,” he says. “It sounds silly but I actually enjoyed playing my football again.”

Enjoyment had not been guaranteed since he left home.

A long way from Wellington

When Waine swapped Wellington Phoenix for Plymouth Argyle in January 2023, he knew he was stepping into something harsher, quicker, more unforgiving. League One was a jump in every sense.

“I knew the jump to League One would be big. Not technically, but in terms of intensity and physicality, the adjustment was massive.”

Then Argyle went up. Promotion euphoria for the club, another brutal step up for a young striker still learning the league.

“And then you get this amazing promotion and you are playing Championship football all of a sudden. It almost came too quickly.”

He scored a couple of Championship goals, including one at Elland Road against Leeds United, but minutes were scarce. A loan to Mansfield was supposed to solve that. It did not.

“That just did not work out at all.”

In those moments, the easy option shimmered in the distance: go home, reset in familiar surroundings, be the big fish again. Waine refused.

“I promised myself that however hard it got I was not going to go back. That would have been the easy option. I stuck it out and have come out of it as a better player and a better person.”

The reward is written on the horizon: a World Cup, and a genuine belief that he belongs there.

From the Olympics to the world’s biggest stage

Waine is not new to major tournaments. He has already played at two Olympic Games for New Zealand, including that unforgettable clash with France at the Stade Vélodrome.

“France in the Velodrome was an awesome game to be a part of.”

But even he knows this is different. The World Cup sits on its own shelf.

“It is going to be another level up.”

The All Whites have been feeling that rise in standard for months. Waine scored in a 4-1 win over Chile in March, a bright note in a testing run that has also brought defeats to Colombia, Ecuador, Finland, Haiti and England.

“You have to realise that when we are stepping up and playing harder opposition, we cannot expect the results to be perfect. We have had to mentally adjust.”

For Waine, the adjustment might also be tactical.

Learning to live with Chris Wood – and play around him

He calls himself “a running nine,” a striker who wants to press from the front and dart in behind. New Zealand already have a centrepiece in that position: Chris Wood, the country’s record scorer and standard-bearer.

There is no sense of rivalry, only realism. If Waine is going to see serious minutes at this World Cup, he may have to do it from the flank. His time at Port Vale has quietly prepared him for that.

“At the start, I was a bit hesitant but I see it as a really positive thing. It just felt really natural. I am actually playing on the left, on the right and down the middle now. It adds another dynamic, which should help my case.”

Because no one is dislodging Wood. So Waine has learned to watch him instead.

What stands out? Patience.

“As a striker, you can barely touch the ball all game but when that one chance comes, you had better take it. He has proven time and time again that he can do that.”

One chance. That is the phrase that keeps returning.

One chance on the world stage

New Zealand open against Iran, then face Egypt and Belgium. The bookmakers will not be scrambling to shorten their odds. The All Whites know their place in the global pecking order, but they also see a sliver of opportunity.

“My first thought was that we have actually got a chance here. Everyone sees us as underdogs but we want to take the opportunity that is in front of us. We want to get our first win on the world stage and we want to get out of the group for the first time ever.”

There will be star power on the other side. Mohamed Salah looms large in that Egypt fixture. Waine laughs when asked about the prospect of a shirt swap.

“I am assuming there will be a few people pulling rank,” he says.

Maybe he will leave with something more valuable than a memento. A goal. A moment. A celebration that travels.

He teased the idea of the Shearer salute making another appearance. “Maybe it will reappear,” he says, still smiling at the thought.

Beneath the humour sits a sharper edge. The same edge that dragged him through those lonely weeks out of the squad, that pushed him through extra finishing drills and endless visualisations.

The aim is simple. “To squeeze the most out of my potential.”

After what he calls “a lot of ups and downs”, he has hauled himself to the brink of something extraordinary. The work is done. The chance will come.

“It just has to be taken really.”