Plenty to celebrate, but Australia can learn from Sweden loss

BRISBANE, Australia — A momentous month in Australian sport has ended; a home Women’s World Cup that captivated the country like nothing truly before it and re-wrote perceptions on what football (especially women’s football) can achieve concluded.

There’s still the final between England and Spain to come, but the Matildas race is now run. And unfortunately for them, it ended in a 2-0 defeat to Sweden in a third-place playoff at Lang Park on Saturday night. Just to make sure there was nothing silly like happiness and celebrations to get in the way of post-mortems commencing.

They’re remarkable things, third-place games. Paradoxical in an extreme. They’re fixtures that, in theory, represent an opportunity to cement oneself as the third-best side in the world and, thus, something to be treasured and valued. Further, it’s a competitive football match for elite athletes for whom when the white line is crossed something tends to click in brains anyway. Just look at Katrina Gorry‘s square-up with Sweden’s Kosovare Asllani late in the first-half.

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Yet when it actually comes to heading to the stadium and going through the formalities of playing in one of them, the overall tone feels more like something approaching an experience in purgatorial punishment than anything else. Securing a place in one of these playoffs often represents one of the worst moments in players careers, given what the alternative was and all. Asllani — who played in her second third-place playoff, to go along with her two Olympic silver medals — effectively summed it up when she mournfully declared that she was “tired of crying big tournament tears,” following her side’s semifinal loss to Spain.

The Matildas, for their part, had said all the right things in the build-up. Extra impetus to perform was added by the chance to secure a podium finish — “a bronze medal” — in a home World Cup was the word, as was the provision of one final moment of inspiration and legacy.

But come kick-off, it — a spark, dashes of inspiration, or even much of a plan at all — just didn’t really look like it was there.

Sweden has hardly set the world on fire with dashing displays of footballing dynamism this tournament. Outside of their 2-1 win over Japan, they’ve not really put in a really strikingly impressive performance. Their leading goal-scorer this tournament has been Amanda Ilestedt, who plays as a central defender but gets her 178cm frame up into the attack for set pieces. But under coach Peter Gerhardsson, they win football matches. They win them quite a lot, actually. Blågult’s loss to Spain midweek arrived in their fourth-straight World Cup semifinal and on Saturday against the tournament co-hosts, they looked a class above.

They’re physical, of course, that was one of the defining features of the game, but they’re also composed and possess skilful players. They are well-drilled and disciplined. They’ve got multiple plans. During the only real period of Matildas’ control in the game — a 10-minute flurry of activity in which they forced the game to be played in the European’s half after going over the top of them and that was highlighted by Sweden keeper Zećira Mušović being forced to save a 23rd-minute effort from Hayley Raso — they dug deep and saw off the threat. Then, three minutes after Raso’s chance, they won a VAR-adjudicated penalty that was coolly dispatched into the bottom corner by Fridolina Rolfö.

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From that point, the Europeans were in cruise control. When they wanted to get on the ball and knock it around, they were able to do so against a Matildas side that was running on fumes — displaying composure and clarity of purpose, combined with a desire to get into the area and add more goals right up until the final whistle. When they wanted to transition, they do so with speed and determination. It didn’t carry the same irresistible electricity as the Matildas at their best, but there was a controlled, foreboding air to it. Case in point their second goal just past the hour mark, when Asllani and Stina Blackstenius combined to drive their side up the field with intent, before the former drove a shot beyond Matildas keeper Mackenzie Arnold.

In Australia’s semifinal defeat to England, Lionesses coach Sarina Wiegman had arrived with a plan and had her chargers execute it to perfection. They were well-drilled, disciplined, adaptable and cool under pressure. Matildas boss Tony Gustavsson didn’t have the answers. At Lang Park, Gerhardsson’s side did the same, only without the sense his side was ever under pressure by either the Matildas or whatever their coach was hoping to accomplish on the night.

Of course, being the better team was made significantly easier by that fatigue affecting Australia. Gustavsson had declared that there was to be no room for emotion at the selection table and that he would select his strongest possible XI for the encounter. And despite running declarations that it would take “23 in 23” across his tenure (which seemingly didn’t mean what most of us thought it did), the manager ultimately proved as good as his word when the line-ups were announced, with the XI unchanged from the group that had fallen to the Lionesses just days prior.

Coming into the playoff, four of Gustavsson’s outfielders — Aivi Luik, Courtney Nevin, Clare Wheeler and Kyah Simon (whose selection amidst her recovery from an ACL must now be categorised as an error) — hadn’t played a single minute. Alex Chidiac, Tameka Yallop, and Charlotte Grant had been officially credited with less than 10. Conversely, six players had logged 565 of the available 570 minutes on offer: Ellie Carpenter, Steph Catley, Clare Hunt, Caitlin Foord, Katrina Gorry and Kyra Cooney-Cross. By the end of the game, only 14 members of the 23 players would log more than 30 cumulative minutes across the 660 minutes on offer. Wheeler, Luik, and Simon didn’t play at all. That the former didn’t get on the pitch at all feels egregious.

Yet this fatigue and associated sloppy moments and brain fades only served to supplement underlying limitations that the Matildas have continued to demonstrate across the cycle. Despite possessing world-class players that play at some of the world’s biggest clubs — players capable of much more — it is still a unit that struggles to create anything beyond long balls when denied transition and/or faced with a set opponent. There is a sense of vibing-chaos to their play that, when it becomes the dominant spirit of the game, is incredibly dangerous but, when faced with an opposition capable of actively resisting, peters out. Australia has come up against two mature footballing nations, England and Sweden, with a clear plan and an ability to take a punch in their last two games and have definitively come up wanting.

Maybe it’s a fitting conclusion. Australia stood on the precipice of something incredible this tournament but when it came time to seize it, was found lacking against the world’s best. That one can even ruefully talk about what might have been after a third-place playoff loss, in a historical context, feels bizarre to contemplate; a credit to Football Australia, these players, and, yes, the work that Gustavsson has done. But that doesn’t stop the prognostications and questions about where to go from here. Daresay, responding to a best-ever finish at a World Cup by picking it apart and trying to figure out where the weaknesses were and how to go better is “football nation” behaviour. Just look at England’s evolution over the past four years after not standing still after a second-straight semifinal.

And yet, in reaching the semifinals of this tournament, the Matildas have also largely exceeded the baseline of expectations most had coming in. The defence has improved significantly and they’re in better shape than they were after the chaotic circumstances of 2019 or the COVID-disrupted arrival of Gustavsson. Regardless of the disappointment of Saturday’s defeat, a fourth-placed finish still represents the best-ever finish at a World Cup — men’s or women’s — of any senior Australian side. The impact that they will have had on Australia is incalculable. A generation of kids, boys and girls, will have been inspired to kick a ball around. The players can absolutely be proud and so can the coach — this isn’t a zero-sum game.

But this was always going to be Australia’s moment, the subject of three years of anticipation and build-up. Everything around this Matildas’ program during this period has been built around this tournament. It was the be all and end all for what felt like the entire sport that would cure all ills. The question was never if it would inspire but by how much. A semifinal appearance has done a lot but, not to be greedy, what if it was a final? Or a third-place finish? Instead, it has ended in this manner — with back-to-back defeats where the side ran into a brick wall and Gustavsson was out-coached.

Because football, like Sweden was, is ruthless. And every soaring high is accompanied by that nagging voice looking at what went right and wrong, because you’ve got to get up tomorrow and do it again.