You don't think the current squad can grow as they mature? We surely have more players in top profesional leagues than the previous all whites:
2x PL players
1x Championship Player
1x Eredivisie Player
1x Ligue 1 player
1x Bundesliga 2 player
Thats half the starting 11 playing in some of the top leagues in europe - although "playing" is a bit of a stretch for Tuiloma, Wood, and Rojas.
Add to that the likes of McGlinchey and Barbarouses who are in the top tier of players in the A-League and we are surely on paper the best all whites squad.
I think that's a pretty generous assessment given where some of those players actually are (and the 2010 squad was, in my view, the best ever All Whites squad, and it could be years before we have it that good again).
But all that is really beside the point - because ultimately, being the best AWS squad isn't really that far from being the tallest dwarf in the world. It's an interesting debate for fans, but doesn't really address the biggie, which is the squad's overall competetiveness at the international level. And it's not really there right now, nor has it been there historically, at least consistently (2010 notwithstanding, and I'm sure that in all honesty, most fans will admit that we did overachieve there).
I guess I've been beating this drum since I watched a lot of EURO qualifiers over the weekend - and I'm talking here sides like Austria, Sweden, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Iceland - sides which I guess most people on this forum would think we could compete against, and I compare that with what happened last night, and yeah. We don't even belong in the same sentence there.