{"id":99781,"date":"2024-08-02T13:46:47","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T03:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=99781"},"modified":"2024-08-02T13:54:24","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T03:54:24","slug":"damning-gustavsson-claim-after-matildas-olympic-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=99781","title":{"rendered":"Damning Gustavsson claim after Matildas’ Olympic failure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Departing Matildas coach Tony Gustavsson is facing more criticism in the wake of the team\u2019s humbling Olympics group stage exit<\/a>, with reports claiming players were dissatisfied with his coaching well before the nightmare in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The darlings of Australian sport failed to back up their fourth-placed finish at the Tokyo Olympics and at last year\u2019s home Women\u2019s World Cup, losing twice to Germany and the USA and escaping with a rollicking 6-5 win over Zambia in a performance that failed to alleviate any fears over the Matildas\u2019 long-term stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gustavsson has been a beacon for criticism of the team since taking on the job in 2020, and a report from The Australian<\/a><\/em> has claimed players were just as disenchanted with his coaching as many pundits and members of the general public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report claims the Swede had lost the dressing room in the lead-up to the Olympics, with players confused by his often helter-skelter tactics during major tournaments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some even described his tenure as \u2018four years of hell\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those claims were backed up by News Corp<\/em> reporter Jess O\u2019Halloran, who told Fox Sports\u2019 Matty and the Missile in Paris<\/em> podcast the Matildas were \u2018a very unhappy camp\u2019 in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey felt that it was just complete disorganised chaos on the field, and you could see that here in France,\u201d O\u2019Halloran said of the Matildas players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a nightmare for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Halloran added that the absence of Sam Kerr due to a knee injury was an even bigger blow than previously thought, with the Matildas champion reportedly \u2018controlling the side tactically\u2019 instead of Gustavsson for lengthy periods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was during the World Cup they said basically Sam Kerr<\/a> was controlling the side tactually,\u201d O\u2019Halloran said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe was effectively captain-coach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disastrous result prompted Robbie Slater, who lashed out at the Matildas following their 3-0 loss to Germany<\/a> to begin their Olympic campaign, to once again sink the boots in, describing the tournament as an \u2018unmitigated disaster\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA quarter-final berth should have been the bare minimum requirement for the Aussies, even in the absence of their best player Sam Kerr,\u201d Slater wrote in The Daily Telegraph<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith only four of the 12 nations missing out on a spot in the last eight, it was harder not to qualify for the knockout stages than to qualify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYet, the Matildas, a team which reached the Women\u2019s World Cup semi-finals last year, still couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slater accused the team of being \u2018pampered\u2019 by Football Australia, blaming the excess attention and presence of family and friends with the team in Paris as well as in Spain for the team\u2019s pre-Olympic training camp, for distracting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe the way the squad was pampered was embarrassing and probably part of the reason they performed so badly,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInstead of working on their on-field performance, it seemed the priority was making sure the players\u2019 clothes were neatly folded, that every player had a single room and didn\u2019t even carry their own bags. It would be funny if it wasn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s little doubt they started to believe in the hype generated in part by FA chief executive officer James Johnson, who stated days before the Matildas\u2019 first game that it didn\u2019t matter how the team performed at the Olympics because of the \u201clegacy\u201d they had already created.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gustavsson has been a beacon for criticism of the team since taking on the job in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":99782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11924,273,35,2053],"tags":[12178,11960,12177,10497],"class_list":["post-99781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2024-paris-olympics","category-australia","category-breaking-news","category-paris","tag-football-australia","tag-matildas","tag-tony-gustavsson","tag-woke"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99781"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99786,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99781\/revisions\/99786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/99782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}