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A talented Snells Beach teen has just spent a month in the tropics taking part in the Oceania Football Confederation U-17 Championships, after being selected to play for Samoa in mid-December.
Cayden Steffener is 16 and a Kiwi, but qualifies for Samoa as he has close family ties there, including the fact that his father was born in the capital, Apia.
He was spotted by Samoan scouts as he played for Auckland City FC’s U-15 squad last season and flew to a training camp on December 28 as one of the youngest players in the team. He travelled to Fiji with the squad on January 9, closely followed by his parents and other family supporters from NZ, before the tournament kicked off on January 12.
After losing 3-0 to Fiji in the opening match, Samoa trounced Tonga 6-0 in the next game and made it through to the quarter finals on Saturday, January 21, but were unfortunately knocked out by New Caledonia, who won 4-0.
While gutted at the loss, Steffener said he was excited to have been chosen for the Samoan squad and to have had the bonus opportunity to learn a bit more about his family’s heritage and culture.
“Playing other international teams was an amazing experience for me and a great challenge for my personal development as a football player,” he said.
The Oceania Championships are not the first international tournament Steffener has played in – he was also selected for an under-12 world club competition in South Korea a few years ago, after a scout for the Wynton Rufer Academy (WYNRS) spotted him playing for Warkworth 12th grade.
He started playing for the WYNRS Academy team, Metro United, then moved to Auckland FC U-14 and U-15 squads before being picked for Samoa U-17.
His dad, Shaun Steffener, is well known locally as a former Warkworth player and junior coach. He coached Cayden from grade 6 to 12 and says he showed promise from an early age, and now playing professionally is his dream.
“He certainly wants to pursue it and I’ve got lots of contacts,” he says. “He was selected two years in a row for a national travelling team that was due to go to Melbourne and Thailand, but they were cancelled because of covid, and the team ended up playing a national tournament instead, with matches in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.”
He says the Oceania tournament was a difficult in some ways for Cayden, but good experience.
“This tournament has been mentally tough,” he says. “The Australian and Kiwi players are coming into a very basic set-up there. It’s a long way from what we do in NZ and Australia.”
Now that the championship is over for Steffener, his next focus is on trials to get into the Auckland FC U-17 team next month.
