Hurricanes flyer Nehe Milner-Skudder could form a brilliant back three with Ben Smith and Julian Savea – not forgetting Highlanders winger Waisake Naholo as a possibility for All Blacks coach Steve Hansen as well.

This New Zealand team has a chance to make history. The All Blacks can be the Holland football team of the 70s, "brilliant orange", playing the beautiful game. Only this time they can win.

It's up to you, really. What do you want? Is it enough just to win the World Cup? Is it enough to be an unlovely and unloved black machine, pulverising lesser teams until they submit? It's not much of an ambition, winning three matches in a row against inferior opposition when this New Zealand team has a chance to make history.

Every 20 years or so a team comes along that changes the landscape, that makes sport something more than a game. They bring hope. They bring optimism. They are part of the counter culture, kids who don't give a damn, kids who want to play beyond boundaries, kids who just want to play the way only they can.

In the 1954 football World Cup final it was the Hungary team of Ferenc Puskas. They played West Germany in teeming rain. They lost. In 1974 it was the Holland team of Johan Cruyff. They played West Germany. They lost. In 1995 it was the All Blacks team of Jonah Lomu. They played South Africa. Well, you know what happened.

And yet who are remembered? There is maybe a difference in the final match because of Mandela and all that, but in each case the real heroes are the losers. And yes, okay, you can make the Jesus Christ analogy. Johan Cruyff even had the same initials.

You can say that deep in our soul is this love of sacrifice in order to emerge in the Promised Land. You can say that you have to lose in order to complete the journey. You can say that our love of Hungary, Holland and New Zealand is precisely because they lost. Without the defeat, the noble mythology of self-sacrifice would be incomplete. Martin Luther King had to be shot in order to fulfil his heroic destiny.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it. The Brazil football team of 1970 were winners. Mandela died an old man. It is possible to complete the journey in sunlight. This All Blacks team has a chance to play with possibility. They have a chance to win the World Cup in style. So good can they be, simply winning is not enough.

Four years ago New Zealand had to carry the cross of 24 years of defeat. They lost their talisman along the way. They picked good footballers on the wings, rugby players who would never let them down. They stuffed the ball up their jumper for the final 10 minutes of a tortured final. In 2011 winning was enough.

No longer. The kids of the Hurricanes, Highlanders and Chiefs did not make the playoffs by chance. They did it because they were prepared to take the chance. Two years younger than the Crusaders, those teams invested in youth. The Canes beat more defenders than anyone. The Chiefs make the most offloads. Ben Smith, the Highlanders captain, has the most run metres, the most tackle busts and the most line breaks over the previous five years.

Steve Hansen, a man of hefty gloom, may not come across as the natural leader to take his people to the Promised Land. But his early choice of Aaron Smith and recent appointment of Wayne Smith suggests differently. These are men who can point the way.

A couple of years ago Smith said, "There is a chance to take the game to another level and you have coaches who are not afraid of losing in order to get there. It sounds paradoxical, but New Zealand play as much rugby as they can because their attitude is that if we do, then nobody will be able to live with us

"Attack is a mood. It is an optimism that invades the team. It means that as soon as they see an opportunity to attack, they'll take it, wherever it is on the pitch."

For the past couple of years the All Blacks have not played all that much rugby. They have played the Crusaders way from side to side, picking the odd hole when teams are stretched, kicking a lot from the back, striking at the end when tiredness takes a hold. They have kept winning, but it has been less and less impressive.

Why would you play like that with so much talent? Hansen can pick a back three of Ben Smith, Waisake Naholo or Nehe Milner-Skudder and Julian Savea. Those guys are a mood. They are an opportunity to attack. Why wouldn't you?

The Waratahs kick away possession less than any other Super 15 team. They are successful. In the final round of the Six Nations, when the competition became a points race, a record 221 points and 27 tries were scored. 9.63 million people watched the game between France and England live on television. 82,319 people rolled into Twickenham.

People want to see the beautiful game and, right now, the All Blacks are the only team who can truly play it. As Cruyff observed, Rinus Michels invented total football not as a way of making beautiful patterns, but as a way of winning. And yet it remains "an unresolved trauma".

I'm not sure about that. Spain won the 2010 World Cup playing beautiful football against, would you believe it, a Holland team that tried to kick them off the park. How glorious it would be if New Zealand won the 2015 World Cup against a Wales team – remember Gareth and Barry and JPR and Gerald from the seventies? – that tried to kick them off the park.

This time it's not enough just to win. This time it has to be brilliant black.