When Matildas head coach Tony Gustavsson was hired back in 2020, he arrived with a reputation as being the tactical "brain" behind the Women's World Cup-winning US women's national team.
Having assisted Jill Ellis for a number of years, the coaching duo were almost seen as two hemispheres of the same mind: Gustavsson with the strategies, Ellis with the people management.
Indeed, one of the most-watched videos of the Swede on YouTube speaks directly to this idea. In it, Gustavsson is leaning over a whiteboard, on which is outlined a football field with 22 coloured magnets set out in a particular pattern.
With this visual aid, Gustavsson steps the viewer through how the USA defeated the Netherlands at the 2019 Women's World Cup final. In just over six minutes, the Matildas' boss explains the USA's entire tactical philosophy and the particular role of its star player Rose Lavelle, who scored in the final and eventually won the Bronze Ball.
It has become easy to forget, in among the grins and goofy catchphrases of the past two years, that Gustavsson is, behind it all, a tactician: a football brain constantly whirring, adjusting, tinkering.
He reminded us of this almost immediately following Australia's historic win over Sweden on Saturday afternoon; the highest-profile win of his tenure to date and one of the most comprehensive performances the Matildas have shown against top-10 opposition.
"I think we struggled for 30 minutes in the first half and we were lucky not to be down one-nil," he said bluntly, popping the balloon of jubilation that seemed to float everybody into the conference room.
"We started off the game very good [in] the first five minutes: pressed high, aggressive, could have scored on the first attack. And then after that, I think we got way too stretched and passive in our defending: they played through us, they played around us, and we could have been one-nil down."
He was right. Sweden was, for the opening 25 minutes of Saturday's friendly, the more convincing side. But for some nail-biting defending and the merciful presence of a goal-post, the Matildas could — and probably should — have found themselves chasing the game before they'd had a chance to put their stamp on it.
So what happened? What changed between those chaotic opening stages, when Sweden looked exactly like the side their world number two rank suggested, and the final whistle that saw them on the losing end of a 4-0 score-line?
It wasn't the stuff Gustavsson has waxed lyrical about in the past: the fight and the spirit and the never-say-die attitude. That was already there — indeed, it was the reason Australia withstood the early Swedish storm.
Instead, as he said afterwards, it was tactics. It was tinkering. It was the small adjustments that, while they may not seem significant at the time, had a knock-on effect that changed the entire system.
"We did a tactical adjustment with 15 minutes left of the first half that worked out well," he said.
"We went from more from a 4-2-3-1 to more of a 4-4-2, where we brought [Cortnee] Vine and [Hayley] Raso lower down the field and flattened out Caitlin [Foord] and Sam [Kerr].
"Because Caitlin and Sam are so freaking good at cutting off passing channels and know when to press, and when they were staggered, we had too much space in the inside pocket and didn't read the triggers well enough, so they played right through us.
"It's not easy to send tactical changes onto the field during the game. Normally, it takes til half-time, but it's something we've worked really, really hard on for a long time: to be a flexible team and a tactical team and work with game management."
The tinkering was most evident with the subtle positional change of Caitlin Foord, who has burst to life for both club and country after being moved from her usual spot on the left wing into the centre-left or centre-forward channels, often in partnership with Kerr or Arsenal strike-partners Vivianne Miedema or Stina Blackstenius.
It was this adjustment that saw Foord score a brace against Denmark in October, and a second brace against Sweden on Saturday. By bringing her a couple metres further in-field, Foord was given more license to combine with long-time team-mate Kerr more often, lean into her superior dribbling skills, and maximise her ability to both run and shoot within tight angles and spaces.
"Caitlin was used good in the Olympics when we played 3-4-3," Gustavsson said. "She came inside close to Sam. Then I changed to 4-3-3 and she played wider on that left wing: she has bigger distances to the 9 and 10, and hasn't been as [influential].
"That's one of the reasons why we changed the role on the left side: when she plays left wing, she should come in or now play as a 10.
"There's so many pieces [going] into this process that sometimes it's very complicated. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong."
Against Sweden, Gustavsson got the pieces — the whiteboard magnets — right.
Foord's movement wasn't the only tinkering he did, though: he also provided some more stability in Australia's back-line by swapping usual left-back Steph Catley with her younger deputy, the left-footed Courtney Nevin, who kept the whippet-quick Sofia Jakobssen largely quiet, and had arguably her best game for the senior team overall.
While Catley's positional move was more to cover the unavailable Alanna Kennedy and Aivi Luik, who'd been struck down by injury and illness respectively, Catley's defensive soundness and passing ability makes her another viable option at centre-back against certain types of opponents.
Gustavsson also made a small adjustment with midfielder Kyra Cooney-Cross, whose influence, especially in the second half, was the strongest argument yet for why her and the dazzling Katrina Gorry — who Gustavsson described as "the heart and the engine of the team" — ought to be the Matildas' starting central pairing moving forward.
Cooney-Cross's movement to set up Foord's first goal in the 51st minute was illustrative. Picking up the ball in her own half, the 20-year-old then immediately accelerated forward, drawing opposition players to her like moths to a flame.
Measuring the incoming pressure around her perfectly, she then released Foord in behind with an outside-of-the-foot pass, which nestled right into Foord's path before the striker then cut in-field and curled the ball into the far corner.
That moment showed not only Cooney-Cross's growing confidence and understanding of her own positional requirements as a box-to-box midfielder, but it was also the perfect illustration of the kind of brave, energetic and attack-minded players Gustavsson has been hunting for.
Having cycled through both Mary Fowler and Emily Van Egmond in that floating midfield role — two players that are arguably more technically and creatively gifted, but who have not shown the same forward bursts or hungry physicality as their younger teammate — it's Cooney-Cross that has emerged as just the right fit.
And that, ultimately, is what this Sweden win felt like: finding, finally, the right balance of things.
As Caitlin Foord said afterwards: "I think over the last year, it's been about finding a balance of what [Gustavsson] wants and what makes us feel good, and I feel like we've finally come together and found that sweet spot."
This was, of course, no Women's World Cup final, and neither Foord nor Cooney-Cross are Rose Lavelle.
But with Gustavsson shuffling the Matildas magnets ever so slightly, which has resulted in performances like this against one of the world's best nations, it's starting to feel like those comparisons are not as far off as we thought.
