{"id":352028,"date":"2023-12-06T05:26:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T06:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=352028"},"modified":"2023-12-06T09:01:55","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T09:01:55","slug":"questions-over-anaemic-matildas-olympic-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=352028","title":{"rendered":"Questions over 'anaemic' Matildas' Olympic hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Matildas<\/a> have gone down to Canada for the second time inside a week following a performance described as "flat" and "unimaginative".<\/p>\n

After Canada won Saturday's friendly 5-0<\/a>, Wednesday's 1-0 result looked better on paper, but still left fans with questions about the team ahead of next year's Olympic qualifiers against Uzbekistan. <\/p>\n

\ufeffLeading football pundit Andy Harper was left disappointed by what he described as a "pretty anaemic" performance from Tony Gustavsson's side.<\/p>\n

RECAP: <\/strong>Wasteful Matildas downed by Canada<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

LIVE UPDATES: <\/strong>Pakistan skipper sends warning with stylish ton<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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"\ufeffThe scoreboard was a marked improvement from the weekend, \ufeffbut in relative terms, was the performance that much better? I'm not quite sure," he told Channel 10.<\/p>\n

\"VANCOUVER,<\/p>\n

"\ufeffFor the best team we've got minus Mackenzie Arnold and Sam (Kerr), it was so flat, so unimaginative. <\/p>\n

"We've been told that we're trying to re-engineer the way we play to take the team to the next level and that's understandable and fine, but the two-game window provided very little evidence of how that's gaining traction.<\/p>\n

"Saturday's game is almost irrelevant now because none of those players got to feature again to see how they would go."<\/p>\n

The match was decided by Quinn's 40th minute header after the Matildas failed to clear a corner kick, and skipper Steph Catley was unimpressed by the manner in which her team conceded.<\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/p>\n

\ufeff"In the end a set piece cost us and that's not good enough, so lots to think about and improve on," she said.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffWe're trying a few different things, a few different \ufeffways of playing, and sometimes that has growing pains. <\/p>\n

"There's times in the game where we're not controlling it, but when we do it looks pretty good, so there's definitely positives to take out of the game."<\/p>\n

The matches against Canada were the final fixtures before February's two-legged Olympic qualification tie against Uzbekistan, and former Matilda \ufeffGrace Gill said Australia could not afford to get ahead of themselves.<\/p>\n

\"Matildas<\/p>\n

"\ufeffIt's not given. It's not granted that qualification is going to occur," she told Channel 10.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffThe Matildas can't get their eyes to the Olympics because they've got to get their eyes past Uzbekistan in the first instance.<\/p>\n

"I think it'll feel like a disappointing result, not for the scoreline, but for the performance. <\/p>\n

"\ufeffWhen it came to the second half it looked like the Matildas became tired, they became leggy, and there could've been a few more changes to inject some energy into the team. <\/p>\n

"I don't think we saw enough given the quality we lined up today. It's fair to say they dominated the game on balance."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Matildas have gone down to Canada for the second time inside a week following a performance described as "flat" and "unimaginative". After Canada won […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":352030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=352028"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352034,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352028\/revisions\/352034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/352030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=352028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=352028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=352028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}