Trailing for close to 80 minutes in the match, the Matildas fought back to not only draw level at 5-5 but struck the winner through Michelle Heyman in the dying moments to reignite their challenge for a place in the quarter-finals.
\n\u201cThis was one of the craziest games we\u2019ve ever played, we didn\u2019t play well and we conceded a lot of goals,\u201d said Gustavsson.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this is not the time to dwell about how we conceded five goals, rather this is the time to talk about the spirit in this team. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow we responded to them scoring with their first shot and how we still won despite conceding five goals. This group of players are amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having lost their opening match 3-0 to Germany, Australia knew they were in a bit of a make or break situation against Zambia and after a disappointing first half, produced an inspired comeback after the restart – led by a brace from captain Steph Catley.<\/p>\n
Gustavsson was hopeful that the win could provide the confidence boost to his team ahead of their final Group B clash against the United States on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes it takes a couple of games to get into a tournament and hopefully we play our way into this tournament when it comes to form.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one can question their fitness after today, to be able to push through that type of game when you\u2019re three goals down with 35 minutes to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are things we can do better defensively, yes, but I think if we are fair, if you want to look at all the chances we had we were close to eight to 10 goals in this game,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The other match in the group saw the United States seal a place in the next stage after defeating Germany 4-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trailing for close to 80 minutes in the match, the Matildas fought back to not only draw level at 5-5 but struck the winner through Michelle Heyman in the dying moments to reignite their challenge for a place in the quarter-finals. \u201cThis was one of the craziest games we\u2019ve ever played, we didn\u2019t play well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1009488,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20967],"tags":[3733,28042],"class_list":["post-1009445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afc-news","tag-afc","tag-afc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1009445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1009488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1009445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1009445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1009445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}