Tony Gustavsson’s tenure as Matildas manager has ended with a whimper, eliminated from the Paris Olympics after conceding ten goals in three games bookended by comprehensive defeats to heavyweights Germany and the USA.
A fourth-place finish at the Tokyo Games and the glorious, dizzying run to the semi-finals of the 2023 World Cup on home soil, with the nation entranced, will stand as far brighter touchpoints of his legacy, but even they are tinged with the sentiment that the group was capable of more.
The search now begins for a replacement who understands the gravity of the position the Matildas now hold in the Australian sporting landscape and can stoke it further, while also stitching in the next generation at the expense of some legends of Australian women’s football – and as Teo Pellizzeri told Box2Box, is also capable of bringing the newfound legion of fans on the ride.
‘A new coach, a new voice and new way of doing things might come in and reset, and that’s what I’m desperately hoping for, that the way things are communicated to the outside world can literally change overnight with a new voice’, said Pellizzeri.
‘But it’s not about appointing a new sales person for exactly what was happening before, but about actually doing things differently. Why wouldn’t you communicate differently to the outside world, about how and why you’ve picked the players and teams you have, as you build towards a tournament?’
The campaign in France was kept breathing until the final matchday only by an insane 6-5 win over Zambia in the second fixture, when the Matildas rallied impressively from 5-2 down. But they were unable even to trigger the generosity on offer to third-placed finishers, and finished as one of the lowly four sides not to progress to the final eight.
It will not stand as their worst tournament under Gustavsson; that mantle is especially reserved for the January 2022 Asian Cup, when a terribly underwhelming quarter-final exit meant the side only partook at the 2023 World Cup as hosts, rather than as a qualified team.
‘The most frustrating thing [of the Gustavsson era] is I never saw the correlation between the friendlies and preparation, the build up to the 2022 Asian Cup and 2023 World Cup, and then what actually happened in the tournaments’, said Pellizzeri.
‘The World Cup [success], to me, was a total shock and departure from the build up. Whereas this Olympics correlated a lot more closely with what the build-up looked like, and the way they prepared in their friendlies was reflected in the tournament itself.’
Pellezzeri also reserved criticism for Gustavsson’s much-discussed delegation of selection and scouting duties to his assistants – ‘there’s a reason so many players called up or that debuted were Queenslanders’ in reference to his reliance on Senior Assistant Mel Andreatta – although did acknowledge that to find a replacement from abroad to do a better job takes on all-manner of complexities.
‘I think we need someone who appreciates and has their finger on the pulse of the whole pyramid… or if they’re international, they must have someone that knows the pyramid as their senior assistant.
‘The issue is, how do you find someone that won’t simply say, ‘I’m not giving my IP to help a foreign coach coming in, so why don’t you just give me the job outright?’ It’s easy to throw up names like Leah Blayney or Mark Torcaso, but why wouldn’t they want it outright?
‘Whether club football or international, they need to understand the job they’re signing up for. We don’t want to hear that you only have ‘X’ number of days, sessions – buddy, that’s the job! You can’t complain about the job you signed up for.
‘This needs to be someone who takes interest, or has pre-existing knowledge of what’s out there. I don’t envy the job, mainly because the pool of Australian players is not hugely deep, so if it’s going to be a foreign coach, it’s equally difficult to find Australian support staff to fast-track this person’s knowledge.’