All White Chris Wood Photo: Andrew Lahodynskyj / www.photosport.nz
The All Whites' biggest win in more than a decade was a year in the making, but the challenge is backing it up.
New Zealand defeated world number 41 Ivory Coast 1-0 on Sunday at the Canadian Shield in Toronto.
The win against a team they were playing for the first time at senior level, and that is ranked 45 places ahead of them in the FIFA world rankings, did not surprise coach Darren Bazeley or captain Chris Wood - or anyone else in the All Whites environment.
"It's a performance that we felt has been coming over the last year," Bazeley said.
The All Whites' participation at the four-team Canadian Shield invitational tournament is part of the long build-up to next year's FIFA World Cup to be co-hosted by USA, Canada and Mexico.
Wood had limited participation in the game against Ivory Coast as his workload is managed after a season for English Premier League side Nottingham Forest in which he played the most games he has in more than eight years.
"The body's feeling the effects of that, I'm not 24 anymore I can't bounce back like I used to," Wood quipped. "Just got to take care of the body because I want to be around for for a long time."
Wood saw the victory against Ivory Coast as a benchmark.
"It gives us belief that we can compete against these strong teams. I think it's one that has really opened the eyes to everybody to know that we are capable of performing against these type of teams and that's the standard we need to set and we need to get better as well," Wood said.
"We cannot fall below the standard we've already set in the previous game we need to strive to be better and have a better performance than we did the other day, which will only make us a better team."
Clashes with high ranked opposition is something Wood said the playing group had sought throughout his All Whites career and the current squad were ready for the challenge.
"I think that's what the last two years have been about, educating, growing as a team, growing as players, individually, and then bringing the performances along to get to this point," he said.
"We know we're going to face these type of oppositions when we come to the world cup and now it's about producing it, putting it together and showing what we're truly about."
Ben Old of New Zealand plays the ball Photo: Andrew Lahodynskyj / www.photosport.nz
Assistant coach Tony Readings agreed with Wood that the squad could improve again against Ukraine after the Ivory Coast result.
"For us it isn't an upset. For us there's an expectation now in this group that we keep getting positive results against this level of teams.
"I think the real focus of this next game is to back up what we've done, but to go to another level, because we know we played well in the last game, but we know we can play better."
The All Whites have noted Ukraine are "very organised" in defence and "very fluid" in attack but the New Zealanders want to "dominate more of the ball", than they did against Ivory Coast, according to Readings.
"For us it's more about us imposing ourselves on the game, so being able to control the ball a lot more, and even when we don't have it being able to make sure that we're dictating the game as well.
"We know it's going to be a tough challenge against them and it's exactly what we need at this time because the more learnings we can get now the better.
"Getting learnings and winning the game, that that's our ideal outcome for this one."
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