Matildas waltzing towards final, but have they improved?
The problem with international soccer is there isn’t enough of it.
By the end of the year, the Socceroos will have played 14 matches in 2015 and six of them were in a three-week period in January’s Asian Cup.
The total number of matches played by our senior men’s national team from 2012 to 2015 (we like to work in four-year cycles) will be just 50.
Out of that 50, only nine were at major tournaments: three at last year’s World Cup and the six at the Asian Cup.
The other 41 includes 19 friendlies and 15 World Cup qualifiers (seven games were played in a minor competition).
You can see most matches either don’t count for much or are played to determine progression to a tournament. That makes international teams difficult to measure.
How good is Spain? The nation that won the 2010 World Cup (and the European Championships of 2008 and 2012) fell at the first hurdle in Brazil a year ago. This was the result of losing just two games.
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Was that an anomaly? Or is Spain declining?
We don’t know. And we may not know until the 2016 European Championship finals are played in 12 months. If the Spaniards win, we’ll call 2014 an aberration. If they flop (or fail to qualify) we’ll confirm that their era has ended. Again, this will only be decided by a few games.
You don’t have this problem in club football. Barcelona lost two consecutive matches in the first half of the 2014-15 Primera División. But each team plays 38 games. By the time the final round was held a month ago, the Catalan side had already clinched the title.
The small number of matches in international tournaments also means luck can be a much bigger factor. Some teams get an easier draw than others and the difference between champion and also-ran can be a wicked deflection or a referee’s error.
Then, rightly or wrongly, sports writers base assessments and criticisms on this tiny sample size.
It may seem extraordinary that anyone could suggest the Matildas haven’t done any better in the current Women’s World Cup than they have previously – they’ve just won a match in the knockout phase for the first time.
But scribes can be cruel.
Past Women’s World Cup tournaments have had 16 teams with eight advancing to the first knockout round (so that round was the quarter-finals).
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This time we started with 24 countries and 16 went through to the next round (the six group winners, the six runners-up and the four best third-placed teams). Yes, it’s a silly format.
A result of the change is that the historic win over Brazil was necessary to get the Matildas to the quarter-finals. But they’ve reached the quarters before because, until now, it was the immediate reward for advancing from the group phase.
And if that’s where their tournament ends, who would bet against a few cynics declaring that there’s been no real progress?
Such a statement might be justifiable but it’d also be unfair.
The group the Matildas were drawn into was by far the toughest. As well as the powerful United States, it included Sweden, who should have been seeded. FIFA seeded Brazil instead of the Swedes because it wanted a South American country at the head of one group.
Finishing ahead of Sweden (a semi-finalist at the last World Cup after knocking Australia out) was no mean feat. Then the Matildas eliminated Brazil, a team they lost to in both the 2007 and 2011 tournaments.
Even more impressive than what they’ve accomplished so far is the way they’ve done it. The Matildas’ play is skillful, attacking and courageous.
Moreover, the squad is united and brimming with a belief that belies its current standing in world soccer. They’re gaining fans rapidly, even beyond our shores.
Which is why it would be a shame for this campaign to end at the same stage that saw the Matildas eliminated in 2007 and 2011. They deserve better (and naysayers don’t deserve oxygen).
They’ll face a tough opponent again in Sunday morning’s quarter-final. Australia will play the winner of the match between Japan and Netherlands. The Japanese are the defending champions.
The Matildas would start favourites against the Dutch while they’d be a 50-50 chance against the Japanese (who were able to cruise through an easy group). But here we return to that reality of international soccer: a team can be eliminated by one moment, perhaps a rotten piece of luck. And then that’s it. For four years.
When I looked ahead to the tournament three weeks ago, I said it was unlikely the Matildas would surpass their best World Cup performances to date (reaching the quarter-finals). I’d love to be wrong about that.
But I also said the tournament would be worth watching and that’s surely beyond doubt now.
Paul Marcuccitti’s soccer column is usually published in InDaily on Mondays. He is a co-presenter of 5RTI’s Soccer on 531 program which can be heard from 11am on Saturdays.
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