Emily van Egmond is four caps off equalling Clare Polkinghorne's record and five caps away from breaking the record altogether but she should never have been named to the final 26-player list for the Matildas in the first place.
Exactly. If we start her against Japan we may lose. We cannot afford to lose a single match in this tournament. Post-World Cup the goals were to advance the women’s game in this country by promoting the A-League Women and the Matilda’s winning a trophy. The first point has had some success (the ALW is much more popular than it used to be, but it’s still lagging behind and not fully professional yet), while the second point has technically been achieved by the under-23s at the ASEAN Championships but we’re yet to see an Asian Cup for the senior team since 2010.
100%. We kept them for too long. I do wonder if Alanna Kennedy will be phased out after this tournament. Surely Michelle Heyman and Emily van Egmond will be.
Alanna Kennedy has to go at the conclusion of the Women's Asian Cup as she's starting to regress, which should pave the way for Jessika Nash to start as a regular centre back for the Matildas. Michelle Heyman will most likely retire either at the end of this major tournament cycle or going into the 2027 Women's World Cup cycle and Emily van Egmond should have gone following the Paris 2024 Olympics cycle.
Totally agree given that the Women's Asian Cup also serves as qualifying for the 2027 Women's World Cup and a precursor to qualifying for the LA 2028 Olympics, but even if we start Emily van Egmond against other powerhouse teams like South Korea, China and North Korea in addition to Japan we may end up losing and risk failing to qualify for a World Cup for the first time since 1991, as well as not making the Olympics for the first time since London 2012.
Knew we would have at least one injury, but fuck that’s a bad loss. Hopefully Jada Whyman gets a go.
I think Jada Whyman will finally make her long-awaited debut for the Matildas during the Women's Asian Cup but it's likely she gets the nod for the Iran game or perhaps opening day against the Philippines as opposed to our last group match against South Korea when we ideally need a full-strength starting XI.
I’m not the tallest person myself, but at 167cm, Jada Whyman is too short to be playing international football as a goalkeeper. Other positions shorter players are definitely ok, but not goalkeeper.
Melissa Barbieri is 168cm tall and still managed to have a storied career between the sticks including as Matildas captain, winning the Women's Asian Cup in 2010 so I don't think it's a problem to have Jada Whyman playing international football at that height.
Japan’s goalkeeper is 170cm and is the regular keeper for Manchester City so I don’t think height matters all that much in the womens game.
We will be relying heavily on Arnold, I haven’t seen much of Whyman lately, she didn’t feature in any of the recent Matildas friendlies and Lincoln is far too raw to feature in an international national tournament.
Jada was one of the best goalies in the Damallsvenskan last season even though AIK had a leaky defence.
I will take your word for it, but as I said we haven’t seen her feature in recent Matildas games.
We haven’t seen her feature in ANY Matildas games. She’s yet to be capped despite having been called up for years. Even though we’re well past the Tony Gustavsson era of keeping the same old players, we still have work to do in order to catch up to the rotation of the European teams.
With much of the old guard being retained from the Paris 2024 Olympics disaster clearly we have not gone past the Tony Gustavsson era and it only serves to prove that the Matildas selection policy is flawed, with the head coach perpetuating the shallowing of the national pool. Ideally we should be calling up fringe players or those from the farm system to replace the same old players with only a select few of the old guard staying on until they're eventually replaced or inevitably end up retiring.
Yeah we need to follow the system of European teams. Look at Sweden for example (who ironically are now coached by Tony Gustavsson). Players like Smilla Holmberg, Monica Jusu Bah, Felicia Schröder, Ellen Wangerheim etc getting called up while they're still quite young. Granted that they're all among the best young talents in the world (two of those moved to the WSL last month and the other two will probably move when they finish school and likely for huge fees; Felicia Schröder scored 30 league goals and 38 goals in all competitions last season) but still, that's how we should be looking.
Sally James was called up to a Matildas camp previously but has never received a cap at senior level, though she has gone through the farm system and been capped for the under-23 Tillies in addition to gaining major tournament experience at last year's ASEAN Women's Championship.
Thanks for the correction. Either way though, how did she get in over Courtney Newbon who won the Golden Glove?