Tommy Smith spent last season getting relegated from the National League with Braintree Town. He is now at the World Cup. That sentence shouldn't be possible, but here we are.
The 36-year-old central defender — born in Macclesfield, raised in New Zealand, and seemingly everywhere else in between — is part of the All Whites squad in North America, representing a country he first played for at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. That tournament, where New Zealand went unbeaten against Slovakia, Italy, and Paraguay, was sixteen years ago. Smith played every single minute of it.
The bet that almost didn't pay off
The decision to join Braintree in the summer of 2024 was a calculated one. New Zealand head coach Darren Bazeley, apparently, rated a gritty National League campaign more highly than another season in the A-League — where Smith had just helped Auckland FC finish top of the regular season table. Smith chose the cold Tuesday nights in Essex over the southern hemisphere sunshine. Braintree finished second-bottom and went down. Smith got his World Cup call anyway.
His career path reads like someone who never quite stayed long enough anywhere to settle: Ipswich Town (11 years, but with loans scattered throughout), Colorado Rapids, Sunderland (never played due to COVID), Colchester United, MK Dons, Macarthur in the A-League, Auckland FC, and then Braintree. He held dual English and New Zealand citizenship and chose the All Whites — correctly, as it turned out — because it gave him a realistic path to international football.
That choice brought him to South Africa in 2010. It brought him to North America in 2026.
What happens next is anyone's guess
Smith didn't feature in New Zealand's opening group game draw with Iran, and with Egypt and Belgium to come, game time looks unlikely. At 36, after a relegation season at non-league level, he's not going to be the man Bazeley turns to in a crisis.
But that almost misses the point. The path from Braintree Town — currently preparing for life in the National League South — to a World Cup squad is not a path that exists for most footballers. Smith found it anyway, for the second time in his career.
Whether he returns to Braintree next season, takes one more contract somewhere else in the world, or calls it done entirely is genuinely unclear. What isn't unclear: he's the only player at this tournament who was getting relegated from England's fifth tier twelve months ago.
