In the end, it was the shoes that gave it away.
While they both paced up and down the same sideline of the Western Sydney Stadium pitch, each pointing and roaring and flailing about like creatures trapped inside invisible cages, there was one noticeable difference between the two head coaches of Spain and Australia during their Cup of Nations clash in Parramatta.
Jorge Vilda, the Spaniard, wore plain white running shoes. Comfortable, perhaps, but ultimately forgettable, uninspiring, and easy to replace.
Tony Gustavsson's shoes, meanwhile, were a splash of colour; loud, bright, joyful. The kind of shoes you remember; the kind of shoes that say something.
It may seem like a small thing, these shoes. But football is often about the small things. "The one per centers", as players and coaches call them.
Because when you do enough of the small things, eventually they start adding up into big things.
And against Spain on Sunday night, Matildas fans began to see the project Gustavsson has been working on with this team for the past two years. His small shoes told the big story.
When his tenure began in January of 2021, the Swede spoke about the need to pit the Matildas against as many high-quality opponents as possible in the build-up to the 2023 Women's World Cup.
Having received a Women's Performance Gap report by Football Australia, he was tasked with exposing the current players to the type of football they should expect to face during the tournament on home soil, while also trying to accelerate the development of younger and emerging players who'd been kept on the periphery.
A World Cup squad is 23 players for a reason, after all, and at that stage, the Matildas had the bench depth of a street puddle.
Their results, in his first 18 months, were worrying: 8 wins, 11 losses, and 5 draws in 24 games. But, he said, they were necessary in order to really know where the Matildas sit in the bigger global pecking order. How can you know where to go if you don't know where you are?
As the losses piled up, so too did the pressure on Gustavsson to either turn things around or justify his place. A lot of people, caught up in the fog of bad score-lines, lost faith. Some even called for his outright sacking.
But behind the scenes, the Swede was always working, always thinking about the next small step, always confident it was all going to add up to something big.
The Matildas' 3-2 win over Spain was, in many ways, the football Gustavsson had always talked about: the high-intensity, aggressive, attack-minded, heavy-metal football that he has been wanting the Matildas to play.
Setting up in a flexible 4-4-2, Sam Kerr and Caitlin Foord led the line, while zippy wingers Cortnee Vine and Hayley Raso had freedom to roam down either side and drop back into a defensive middle-third line when required.
Katrina Gorry and Kyra Cooney-Cross combined beautifully once again as the two metronomes in midfield, switching directions of play and breaking up counter-attacks, while 23-year-old Clare Hunt made her starting debut alongside veteran Clare Polkinghorne, with the two centre-backs hardly putting a foot wrong.
Raso and Vine were particularly deadly in transition, the two acting as the escape routes for counter-attacks after the Matildas won back possession with their high press.
Vine opened the scoring in the 11th minute with a stunning strike from outside the 18-yard box following a clever Raso square-pass.
Polkinghorne poked a second home five minutes later, with Foord adding a third through a bullet header just before half-time.
Kerr could have added a fourth somewhere in there, too, but it was called back for a questionable offside that replays showed probably should have stood.
Spain, on the other hand, looked shell-shocked and directionless. While this is not their best team, this was still a side filled with recent youth World Cup winners; a side that defeated the United States and drew with Sweden not long ago.
Spearheaded by the country's all-time top scorer in Jenni Hermoso, they were no pushovers on paper.
But football is not played on paper, and coming up against Australia's high-energy press, their adjustable formation, multiple players in form, and 17,333 home fans at their back, the Spaniards largely wilted in the first half.
It wasn't a perfect performance, though.
Gustavsson was quick to burst the bubble of jubilation afterwards, crediting goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold in particular for making several crucial saves after Spain found their way through the Matildas' press.
He also conceded his own formation changes and the timing of substitutions allowed Spain back into the game in the second half.
But it's worth, for the sake of the extended metaphor, breaking down the Matildas' big picture into their smaller parts here.
Sunday's starting XI contained four players (Kyra Cooney-Cross, Clare Hunt, Charlie Grant, and Cortnee Vine) who hadn't been capped at senior level before Gustavsson's arrival.
It was anchored at the back by Mackenzie Arnold — who, for years, had to be content as the bench warmer behind either Lydia Williams or, more recently, Teagan Micah — in what was one of her best stints in a Matildas' jersey.
More generally, this was a team who, just over a World Cup cycle ago, struggled to play in anything other than a 4-3-3 formation; who did not have the defensive depth to manage long-term player injuries; whose midfield and centre-backs lacked the speed and intensity to keep up with where the international game was headed; and who over-relied on captain Sam Kerr to score goals when all else failed.
But now, here they are, answering so many of those long-asked questions and playing some of the best football so far under Gustavsson while doing so: aggressive, decisive, systematic and, most of all, collective.
"What I'm most proud of today is the team effort," Gustavsson said afterwards.
"It was a team out there tonight. They did it together. They worked with each other. They played together. That's what I'm most proud of."
And that's where his shoes come back into it.
In the same way that Vilda's forgettable white sneakers told a story of his connection to Spain's current team, so too did Gustavsson's splash of colour speak to the connection that has been created within his.
Because when the Swede first started this job, it wasn't just about getting the Matildas to play better. It was also about allowing them to be better; getting to know who they were as people, and encouraging them to embrace themselves off the field in order to create history on it.
Sunday night, then, wasn't just memorable for being Australia's first ever victory over Spain, nor for extending the team's winning streak to six matches, something they haven't achieved since their remarkable 2017 run when they were catapulted into the country's consciousness.
It was also significant for the rainbow numbers each player wore onto the field; the first time an Australian national football team has participated in a Pride initiative during an international fixture.
Many Matildas fans, as well as the players and staff members themselves, are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, and there has been a noticeable increase in their visibility over the past two years.
When approached with the idea of the Pride jerseys, which were launched to coincide with the start of 2023 Sydney WorldPride, all players were supportive.
At half-time, Chloe Logarzo (who is recovering from a foot injury) was announced as an ambassador for the event, celebrated for her advocacy work in the LGBTQIA+ space.
Many of the Matildas recognise the importance of their representation, and the responsibility of being part of something bigger than themselves.
Gustavsson does, too. And that's why he wore the shoes.
Because he knows that small acts can add up into big movements. He has seen it happen before his eyes, with this team of players, over the past two years.
Piece by piece, game by game, brick by brick, the Matildas have been rebuilding themselves on new foundations, creating connections not just between each other on the field, but with the rest of us off it, as well.
"We talked today about connection; that being connected was going to be key to how we were going to win against Spain," he said.
"Connected in defending, connecting in attack, and doing this as a team.
"It's a way for me also to connect to the players on the field, with those shoes, because we need to do it together: from the sideline, from the stands, on the pitch.
"This is so much more than 90-minute football."
And that is the bigger story.
