Early under-20 nod caps Wellington Phoenix prodigy Luke Brooke-Smith’s big year
Wednesday, 4 June 2025
Luke Brooke-Smith turns 17 on Sunday, but his celebrations will have to wait.
The teenage football prodigy will be on the other side of the international date line, with the national under-20 team in Chile, where his birthday will begin almost 24 hours after it does back home.
He has packed a lot into the past 12 months – moving from Cambridge to Wellington, signing his first professional contract with the Phoenix and representing New Zealand at two different age levels – but the next 12 months could be even bigger.
In his next trip around the sun, he is first looking forward to a brief off-season, then to the Phoenix’s high-profile friendly against Wrexham in July, with an age-group World Cup or two and his second season in professional football to follow.
Before flying to South America, Brooke-Smith reflected on the fact that this time a year ago, he was still days away from taking part in his first national team trial, at under-16 level.
“I wasn’t expecting to be here a year later,” he said, referring to the fact that he has been picked by coach Chris Greenacre to make the step up to under-20 level a cycle ahead of schedule as a 16-year-old.
“He just called me and said congratulations and I was super happy.”
Brooke-Smith’s emergence as an attacking prospect – primarily as a dribbler, a skill rarely maximised in New Zealand, but also as a passer – was one of the few bright spots as the Phoenix slumped to an 11th-place finish in A-League Men last season.
Aged 16 years and 199 days when he made his debut, off the bench against the Newcastle Jets just prior to Christmas, he became the youngest player in club history.
His first start followed against Melbourne City – a match his parents were in town for and one that summed up how rapidly he had risen.
“December the year before I went to go watch the Phoenix play Melbourne City at Mt Smart and they won 1-0 and I was begging for autographs and everything.
“Then literally a year and one month later, I started against Melbourne City.”
Brooke-Smith’s first professional goal came at the venue where he had been a teenage autograph seeker, pulling one back for his side four minutes after halftime against Auckland FC in the third New Zealand derby in February, briefly giving them hope after they had been behind 3-0 at the break.
'The halftime whistle blew, and Chief (coach Giancarlo Italiano) comes up to me and Nathan (Walker, another teenage attacker) and says, ‘Come in the changing rooms, you're probably going on’.
“That's the loudest I've heard him be in the change room, definitely, and then he just says, in the middle of talking, ‘So when Luke and Nathan’ and I was like, ‘Oh, we're actually coming on’.”
After helping create the chance with a run from the left and a pass to release Kosta Barbarouses, Brooke-Smith was on the spot to follow up when Walker’s initial shot was saved. Making the milestone extra special was the fact that it was his mum’s birthday.
The Phoenix went on to concede three more goals and lose 6-1, with Brooke-Smith giving the ball away cheaply in the lead-up to Auckland’s fourth – a reminder he still has plenty of learning to do and a moment he seized upon immediately.
“I said to myself, I'm going to regret not trying or sulking on the pitch, because this is the moment I'm going to live for – my first ever game scoring – and I felt like I came back from it pretty well.”
Brooke-Smith finished the season with 493 minutes to his name from 14 appearances – a first taste of professional football that has him primed for a bigger role in year two.
He said his biggest lesson from year one was the importance of “the mentality side of things” – making sure that when he’s on the field looking to take opponents on, he’s doing so with extreme confidence, embracing his inherent competitive nature.
“When I'm watching professional football, I have a different mindset watching it. Now I'm a professional, I sort of know what their day to day can look like, and what they go through.
“It's not arrogance, but it's almost a belief – give me the ball, I'm the best player. Not to say that you're going to go around with your head up, telling that to everybody, but deep down, as soon as you walk onto that pitch, you've got to have the confidence.
“Chief told me a fact – that Neymar (completes) five out of 10 dribbles, but you only see his best five, you don't see his worst five.
“That's something that stood out to me a lot. People end up calling him the best dribbler in the world because of the fact that he gets so many successful eventually.”
Players with the ability to beat their marker and create opportunities for themselves and team-mates are in hot demand around the world, but especially so in New Zealand.
That can be seen in the way some fans still hold out hope for Marco Rojas – once a Phoenix teen famed for those abilities himself, but most recently seen ending his second stint at the club early after an injury-wrecked homecoming this past season.
Brooke-Smith said his love of dribbling comes from being a fan.
“When I was watching football, when I was younger, I'd watch the wingers at halfway and I'd be like, ‘Why don't they just run through the whole team?’
“Obviously, I'm not doing that, but I know what it's like to be a supporter, and I just want to excite the fans.”
Brooke-Smith will round out his 17th year on the planet with two under-20 friendlies against Chile this Thursday and Sunday (NZ time), where he will get to make one final step up in a 12-month period where he has already taken so many.
He hopes to be back in Chile in September, with New Zealand set to meet them again on the opening night of the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, which the South American nation is hosting.
His second A-League Men campaign will follow, while there is also the prospect of a FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Qatar in October and November, if the Phoenix allow him to go.
The ultimate dream, of course, is to play for the All Whites, who are 12 months away from returning to the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 16 years.
The senior national team’s most famous player – Chris Wood – once went from Cambridge FC, to Hamilton Wanderers, then on to professional football and the international stage.
Brooke-Smith began his senior career at the same two amateur clubs, and credits former national coach Ricki Herbert’s academy programme for keeping him in a sport he was considering quitting when he was 10 and making bigger waves as a BMX rider out of Whāngarei.
A clear path has been laid out before him. So far he has taken it quickly, but even if he slows down, his unwavering confidence should help him get there eventually.