Matildas interim coach Tom Sermanni made four big changes to Australia’s starting team against the USA on their home soil in their SheBelieves Cup game this morning, but it did not stop the World No.1 side scoring in the opening minute.
After an embarrassing 4-0 loss to Japan in the opening game on Friday Sermanni has swung the axe on some of his veteran players with goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold being dropped for Teagan Micah.
Katrina Gorry, Clare Hunt and Tameka Yallop also started on the bench as Holly McNamara, Charli Grant and Winonah Heatley joined the starting line-up.
But it appeared to have no immediate impact on the Matildas’ fortunes with the USA scoring inside a minute through Lynn Biyendolo.
Biyendolo almost bagged her second goal 15 minutes later but Micah made a great save to deny her.
Minutes later Heatley suffered an ankle injury but has continued playing after falling badly.
Sermanni said before the game he would not make “wholesale” changes” before essentially doing exactly that for the match against the Olympic champions in Arizona.
“Coaches often talk about wholesale changes, but when you look at it, nobody actually makes wholesale changes,” Sermanni said.
“But we’re making a few changes. We’re definitely changing the line-up and bringing a few different players in.”
Sermanni indicated some substitutes against Japan had earned starts.
“The key thing for us in this tournament is it to try and give exposure for players that are not regulars in the team. And that’s what we tend to do during the tournament,” Sermanni said.
“How much we can do that depends on a whole lot of factors, but it’s certainly our intent to get some of those younger players out there and playing in the team – whether they come off the bench, or whether they start in the team.
“At the same time, you have to look at putting out a balanced team.
“If you look back two or three years ago, when Australia put out a very inexperienced team against Spain (losing 7-0), I don’t think that was a really valuable exercise at the time.
“Getting the right mix is what’s really important. Because you don’t just want to throw young players in if that mix isn’t right, because you’re kind of exposing them and you’re potentially doing them some damage at the same time.”
US coach Emma Hayes fielded some younger players in a 2-0 win against Colombia.
But Sermanni was acutely aware of the Americans’ depth.
“We’ve got to get lots of things right. The first thing is we need to be ready to go out there and compete and deal with their intensity and their quality of play,” Sermanni said.
“The thing that the US has done now is they built up not just a starting team, but a real quality squad, where even if they have five or six key players missing, they still get an outstanding team.
“They’re a very formidable team at the moment. So the first thing in the first and foremost thing, is that we need to go and compete – that’s that’s basically what we need to do.
“Then if we do that, we need to then have the confidence to play the kind of football that we’re capable of.”