They’re the latest in a string of national teams who have copped a number of injuries to key players, with coaches scrambling to figure out who to call up to replace them.
As I wrote about on Monday, the Matildas’ shallow player pool has been a concern for a long time, but it’s becoming particularly urgent with nine players having withdrawn from the current camp due to various injuries, and just one more window left in which to prepare for Paris.
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Chloe Logarzo, Lydia Williams, Charlize Rule, Katrina Gorry, Clare Hunt, Courtney Nevin, Aivi Luik, and Emily Gielnik (who came in as an injury replacement!) have all been forced out of this current window, giving all of us a bolt of anxiety about what the next few months could look like.
Tony Gustavsson was his usual glass-half-full self when asked about the crisis yesterday, saying this window is an opportunity to experiment with players and try out different things.
“It was a massive opportunity for us to try different ways, different players, different tactics, different game management stuff in a closed-door environment to not reveal too much; trying things we feel the need to improve come Olympics.
“Tomorrow will be a time â I don’t like the word experiments â but it will be a day when we’re going to try a lot of things.”
But it begs the question: how are these athletes managed back in club-land, and what is their communication like with Football Australia?
Increasingly, players are complaining about unsustainable workloads and travel, and in the midst of an ACL crisis, these calls for reform of the global match calendar are getting louder.