Matildas Paris Olympic ‘mess’ revealed: ‘It’s a sh*tshow’
The Matildas Olympic campaign has been rocked by a damning report that details scenes of disharmony within the locker room.
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Stunning revelations have been made about the disorganisation and disunity in the Matildas camp as their Olympic campaign lurches towards disaster.
The Australian has exclusively uncovered the disharmony under coach Tony Gustavsson in a bombshell report published on Tuesday night.
YOU CAN READ THE FULL REPORT HERE
Australia’s favourite team has stumbled out of the blocks in France, copping a 3-0 thumping at the hands of Germany before admirably fighting back in a 6-5 win against Zambia which exposed the defensive vulnerabilities of both teams.
Sources have now revealed to The Australian the “disorganised” direction coming from Gustavsson, who controversially conceded his players “weren’t ready” to play after the German embarrassment.
Once source described the campaign to journalist Jess Halloran as a “shitshow”, while others called it a “mess”.
Halloran said the absence of Sam Kerr is being keenly felt by the playing group – and also revealed the inspirational captain’s “relationship with Football Australia is at an all-time low”.
Australia plays the USA on Thursday morning (AEST) and is likely to progress to the quarterfinals of the competition regardless of the result.
Gustavsson’s stint as coach is expected to finish after the Olympics. Football Australia is yet to say publicly if his contract will be renewed.
While the report detailed issues behind closed doors, on the field the Matildas have struggled to emulate their best.
Australian football legend Mark Bosnich applied the blowtorch to the team as he exposed a key problem in the wake of their loss to Germany.
Bosnich detailed the players were all simply unaware of where their teammates were going to be as he blamed the teams lack of cohesion on the coach.
“Well, this was for me a massive problem,” Bosnich said on Stan Sport’s Olympics Daily show.
“Now ideally, you want to have people in positions where they know they don’t even have to put their head up if they don’t want to but they know that somebody’s going to be there.
“And this was happening time and time again.”
Defensively the Matildas have resembled a slice of Swiss cheese throughout their opening two matches in Paris.
After conceding eight goals, the Matildas were put on blast by former Wallabies great Greg Martin.
“Our defenders are so lazy it’s like they had lead in their feet,” Martin said on Triple M Brisbane.
“Quite simply, the Matildas have become the Brisbane Broncos. Their heads are so far up their bums they’ve believed in their own hype.
“They think you’ve just got to turn up and what happened at the World Cup, those performances will just replicate themselves.
“And do they? No. I’ve had a gutfull.
“The harder you work, the luckier you get and right at the moment it appears that the Tillies don’t appear to be working very hard.”
Despite the intense backlash being thrown the way of the Matildas, Gustavsson is keeping the faith and believes his team can turn their form around.
“We have conceded a lot of goals in this tournament and we need to be more compact in our defending,” Gustavsson said.
“We need to defend the set plays better, we have to show up. We looked at a lot of video because you can’t really train that much, you can do a walkthrough and such but you can’t train with intensity, this deep in the tournament.”
While he kept his cards close to his chest, the Matildas coach revealed the type of game plan he hopes to execute.
“I hope to see a Matildas team that is very solid in defending but also very good with the ball,” Gustavsson said.
“We also need to be brave with the ball. There are very few weak areas in the way they play - but we’ve targeted a couple of them and hopefully we can get the ball into those spaces often enough to score.”
Australia will take on the USA on Thursday at 3am (AEST).
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