Next weekend, Caitlin Foord and Steph Catley will suit up for Arsenal in the first leg of their UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final against eight-time winners Olympique Lyonnais.
They will, of course, be desperate to progress. But the best thing for their international careers, and their hopes and dreams of winning a trophy with the Matildas, might be to lose.
As Catley said after the Matildas’ 2-0 win over South Korea on Monday night, and as Foord hinted last week, national team players feel like they’re in “limbo” without a permanent coach in place.
It shouldn’t last too much longer, though it seems more probable than not that interim boss Tom Sermanni will be in the chair again for Australia’s next pair of friendlies against Argentina – the first, in Melbourne, coming just five days after the Champions League final.
Everyone wants the next coach to be Joe Montemurro, who has a contract with Lyon, the long-time standard-bearers in the women’s game, through to the end of the 2025-26 season. Though the lure of coaching one’s country at a home tournament is strong, willingly leaving a club like that is hard to imagine.
But it’s a bit easier to imagine if Lyon manage to win the Champions League.
Steph Catley wore the armband in both matches against Korea.Credit: Getty Images
That would be the last significant trophy in club football that Montemurro hasn’t won, assuming he also adds the French title to the ones he’s claimed in Australia, England and France. If he falls short, he might feel as if he has unfinished business there. If they win, he will have basically “completed” Europe, and might feel ready for his next challenge.
In an ideal world, Montemurro will be nursing a hangover from Champions League celebrations while watching the Matildas’ next fixtures in the stands, finalising his plans for a takeover. There’s a lot of work to do and, if that’s when he’s appointed, not much time to do it.
It might be broken-record territory, but there really is no getting over the impact of the coaching situation. It has been most irregular to see a nation as prominent as Australia go so long without any sort of on-field direction, and especially with an Asian Cup just around the corner.
So kudos to Sermanni, who in difficult circumstances has ensured that the Matildas have taken as much as they could from these two games against South Korea. Standing still in women’s football these days is going backwards; at least in this window, they’ve taken a tiny step forward.
Matildas interim head coach Tom Sermanni.Credit: Getty Images
Though their cohesion in the final third and retention of possession could have been better, it’s hard to sneeze at two confidence-boosting wins and two clean sheets against the team that knocked them out of the last Asian Cup in heartbreaking fashion.
In Newcastle, Sermanni may have found the answer to the seemingly eternal question of how Australia can get the best out of Mary Fowler and her majestic talents.
It was pretty obvious, though: play her in the same position and role as Manchester City, out on the left wing, enabling her to cut inside and use her vision and technique to set up goals or score them herself, as she did on Monday night.
“At club land, I play on the wing quite often, and I really like playing there,” Fowler said.
Mary Fowler.Credit: Getty Images
“I see a lot of the field from there and just a lot of different angles, so I enjoyed being there … on a personal level, I want to try to be a bit more consistent with my performance as a national team. I think being out in that position made it a bit easier for me to be in a role that I’ve played quite a bit this season.”
Playing Fowler on the left means Foord will have to play elsewhere. The good news is she can play just about anywhere. Foord came on at half-time for Holly McNamara, who has recovered from her third ACL injury to prove she has a role to play for the Matildas, and was deployed as a central striker. She can also play on the right, as she has occasionally with Arsenal, and to best accommodate Foord and Sam Kerr, that might be her best position moving forward.
Throw in the likes of Sharn Freier, Hayley Raso, Michelle Heyman, Kaitlyn Torpey and, at some point, Cortnee Vine, and there are a bunch of puzzle pieces waiting to be put together.
Speaking of Kerr, there’s another tick for this window: Kerr has been successfully re-integrated into the Matildas set-up and the circus surrounding her behaviour and captaincy has now passed. The rousing reception shown by crowds in Sydney and Newcastle each time the 31-year-old was shown on the big screen was evidence of what Sermanni said last week: most Matildas fans still adore her.
“Even playing, when she comes on the big screen, the cheer … it’s a bit of a shock because you’re like, ‘Have I missed something? What’s going on’?” Catley said.
“It just shows how much the country loves her and so many people support her. We support her … she’s been through a really tough time the last year or so, and the main thing for us is just making sure that she was OK as a person and having her in camp and her leadership and just having her around is always amazing for us. It’s nice to have her back.”
There are, of course, problems in other parts of the field, but the impending return of midfield linchpin Katrina Gorry and the re-emergence of Charli Grant as a genuine starting option in defence will help. But none of that can be fixed until there’s someone in place tasked with fixing it.
Until then, at least, the vibes are better.
Fowler summed it all up fairly well. “I think we’re all quite honest that there’s still a bit to go,” she said. “But it’s nice that we see a bit of ourselves again.”
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