Football Australia has hit back at criticism that the Matildas are “pampered,” following the team’s disappointing group stage exit from the Olympics.
There has been intense scrutiny of the national team in recent days, particularly in News Corp papers, with former Socceroo Robbie Slater writing in a column that the team had been “pampered”. Some of the criticism related to the team’s use of a charter flight to get from a training camp in Spain to the Games, and the staff to player ratio within the team.
But at a press conference in Australia on Sunday, Football Australia chief executive James Johnson rejected the label and expressed his disappointment at the nature of the criticism.
“The narrative of pampering is very disappointing to hear,” Johnson said. “The reality is, we set the Matildas’ program up the same as what we set the Socceroos up. These are a great group of women, they’re great footballers, they play at the biggest clubs in the world, and quite frankly they deserve to have a program as good as the Socceroos.
“They’re not being pampered, they’re being treated like professionals.”
But Johnson admitted that the Matildas had underperformed in Paris, although he was keen to contextualise the reign of now-departed manager Tony Gustavsson.
“We didn’t do as well as we wanted to do – we need to own that, as a team and an organisation,” he said. “We did go out to number four and number five in world football – both US and Germany as of this morning are both in the semi-final of the Olympics.
“I think if we look at the cycle more broadly, and Tony’s era, he has overseen arguably the biggest and best ever period for Australian football,” Johnson said. “He has seen the team go to two semi-finals, both the Tokyo Olympics and the Women’s World Cup.”
Johnson also rejected reporting that there was disharmony in the camp, saying the governing body had received no negative feedback through anonymous internal reporting channels.
Football Australia will now begin the hunt for a new Matildas coach. Johnson suggested the team would take its time, given the national team do not have any international matches scheduled until October. Johnson described winning the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup on home soil as a “key priority” for the team.
