Australia coach Tony Gustavsson on Tuesday likened the support and belief from the home crowd to “fuel and energy,” which would give the Matildas a unique edge over “massive favourite” England at the FIFA Women’s World Cup semifinals.
After a thrilling penalty shoot-out win over France in Brisbane, Australia made history by advancing to their first-ever semifinals at the World Cup.
The Matildas will take on the newly crowned European champion and world No.4 England, who was also a semifinalist in the last two World Cups, before a home crowd of over 75,000 people.
“If you look at rankings, they are favourites. If you look at where their players play, they have starting players in top clubs, in top leagues all over the world. But not just 11, they have like 15 or 16,” Gustavsson told reporters at a pre-match conference.
“Obviously they are a massive favourite for this game,” he said. “But the one thing that we have, and they don’t have is the support and the belief from the fans. And that is going to be massive tomorrow.”
The 50-year-old Swede regarded it as a “privilege” to have a huge fan base believing in the Matildas. “We look at it more as fuel and energy than pressure,” said Gustavsson.
The most recent encounter between the two teams was in April this year when Australia ended the Lionesses’ 30-game unbeaten streak with a 2-0 boil over victory. “When we played them last time, we got a good transition game going, but I also know that England learned a lot from that game,” Gustavsson recalled.
He noted that when England played Nigeria in their Round-of-16 clash, the Lionesses played “much more direct than they normally do” to pressure their opposition that excelled in transition.
“It will be an interesting tactical game in that sense…is England going to stay true to their possession game, or are they going to take away our transition and play a different football than they normally do and adjusting in that sense?” said the coach.
“We practiced for both systems that they can play 4-3-3 and 3-5-2. And we’ve also played three different systems in this World Cup, so we might be flexible and do something different as well,” he added.
Gustavsson also mentioned that some of the English players have “the very same tendencies,” no matter what system they play.
“When we played them last time, we managed to target specifically two of those players and benefitted from that tactically. We looked into those nuances and that individual behaviour a little bit more now, instead of the system, and hope that we can target that tomorrow as well,” he noted.
Having 24 years of coaching since 2000, Gustavsson observed that playing tournaments is “completely different” from spending week in and week out in a league. One of the lessons he took from tournaments is “all it takes is one moment.”
“One moment can be the decider whether you win or lose, and you need to live in every single moment because that’s how small the margins are in a semifinal or a final,” said Gustavsson.
