Abby Erceg: A Defiant Choice Amidst the World Cup
Abby Erceg has never been one to follow the script.
When the World Cup finally came to New Zealand – the dream scenario for any Ferns stalwart – the defender who had worn the shirt more than anyone else walked away. No farewell tournament. No last stand on home soil. Just a decision that cut against every romantic notion of a perfect send-off.
“It was a really tough decision,” Erceg said. She spoke to friends, mentors, people she trusted. She weighed the lure of a home World Cup against a nagging feeling she couldn’t shake.
“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. But it just didn’t sit right with me personally and professionally.”
So she did what few players in her position ever dare to do. She said no.
“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.”
She sat on it for “a long, long time”, turning the choice over in her mind until she knew she could live with it. Others have called it brave. Erceg is reluctant to wear that tag.
“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.”
The decision now sits in the background of a World Cup campaign that promised so much and fizzled too soon. New Zealand stunned Norway 1-0 in an emotional opener, only to take a single point from the remaining games against the Philippines (0-1) and Switzerland (0-0). The question lingers: what might that back line have looked like with Erceg’s experience and authority holding it together?
This is not the first time she has stepped away on principle. Erceg has always marched to a different beat.
She retired in 2017. Came back. Retired again in 2018, frustrated by what she saw as New Zealand Football’s lack of support and resources for the women’s game. Then returned once more ahead of the 2019 Women’s World Cup, drawn back by the pull of the shirt and the sense of unfinished business.
For all those interruptions, her legacy is beyond dispute. She became the first Fern to reach 100 caps and finished with 146 appearances, 49 of them as captain. Three World Cups. Three Olympics. A constant presence in an era when the women’s game in New Zealand was still fighting for basic recognition.
Her club résumé is just as decorated. Erceg collected three National Women’s Soccer League titles – one with Western New York Flash in 2016, two more with North Carolina Courage in 2018 and 2019 – in a league widely regarded as one of the toughest in the world. In North Carolina, she found the kind of high-performance environment every professional craves. Walking away from that, just as walking away from a home World Cup, was never going to be simple.
After 12 years in the United States, she took a different path again, heading south to Mexico for a season with Toluca. It proved to be a revelation.
“It was phenomenal,” she said. “The culture, the food, the people, the football, the excitement around it. Such an incredible country.”
At 36, she is now in the space many veterans eventually reach: plenty of offers, but a shifting sense of what matters.
“There are offers from everywhere,” Erceg 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, the immediate challenge is far more concrete – and far more daunting.
Erceg is part of a scratch side preparing to face eight-time English champions Chelsea, one of the true superpowers of the women’s club game. A hastily assembled group, only a few weeks of training, up against a machine that measures itself in titles and Champions League runs.
“It’s going to be a challenge – and that’s a polite word,” she said.
“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: standing in front of a giant, fully aware of the gap, still willing to step into the contest.
Erceg may not know where her next contract will be signed, or which country she will call home in a year’s time. But as New Zealand football measures itself against the likes of Chelsea and the global game continues to accelerate, one thing is clear: she’s still helping define where the bar should be set.
