Women’s World Cup Co-Hosts Australia Looked At Women’s Euros In England, Qatar World Cup For Legacy Plan

Football Australia looked at the Women’s Euros in England and the Men’s World Cup in Qatar while making its legacy plan beyond the Women’s World Cup, the governing body’s CEO, James Johnson, told Forbes in an interview.

Australia, co-hosts of the ongoing Women’s World Cup with New Zealand, released “Legacy ‘23” – which its governing body described as a strategic plan to harness the growth of women’s football and deliver enduring benefits for Australia’s largest community sport beyond 2023.

Johnson said that when Australia bid to co-host the July 20-August 20 tournament, they aimed to use the tournament to transform the sport and made the legacy plan six months after winning the bidding process.

The legacy plan includes three key components – to increase player participation across Australia, work with the governments to increase investment and a high-performance program for the Matildas to prepare them for the World Cup.

Johnson said that Football Australia looked at four football events from the past – the 2022 Women’s Euros in England, the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar as well as the 1994 Men’s World Cup and the 1999 Women’s World Cup, which were both held in the United States.

“So we looked at certainly the Euros in England but we are already quite advanced at the time on our legacy journey. But something we learned from the Euros in England was the importance of the first match to the remainder of the competition. It was a big game and it set the tone for the tournament,” Johnson told Forbes.

“So what we learned from that and what we did here in Australia is we shifted the Matildas opening match from Sydney Football Stadium, which has a capacity of about 45,000 to Stadium Australia, which has a capacity of 80,000.”

The move, then, seemed like a little bit of a gamble for Australia, but eventually, it worked wonders as the game attracted 75,784 fans, the largest ever crowd for a women’s football match in the country, as Matildas won 1-0 against Ireland in their opening match.

“We also looked a lot around what Qatar did with legacy, and their focus was very much on infrastructure, football infrastructure, stadiums, but also new transport systems etc,” Johnson explained.

“Now we knew very well that we were never gonna get the level of investment into a legacy that the Qatar government was going to give. But we looked at the framework and the strategy that Qatar provided.

“The other legacy that we looked at was the 1994 Men’s World Cup in the United States, which was a period for the U.S. game that transformed the broader game in the United States.

“So we looked at 1994 and we also looked at 1999 Women’s World Cup in the U.S. and how these two tournaments were used by US soccer to transform the sport.”

Johnson says the aim of the legacy is that although the tournament is held in Australia and New Zealand, they want the impact to be felt in the broader region of Asia and Oceania.

Preparation For Matildas

In the build-up to the World Cup, the Matildas faced every top-10-ranked team as part of their preparation.

Johnson said that Football Australia analyzed the team’s weaknesses in early 2020.

“Number one was the team didn’t have enough depth, so there weren’t enough young players that were coming through and getting valuable match minutes. And on the other hand, what we learned is that the Matildas, while they had a very good win ratio at the time, they weren’t beating top global nations and in particular top European nations,” he explained.

“And obviously that was a problem because they’re the types of teams you face off against at the back end of World Cup tournaments, so they were the two challenges.

“So we invested heavily in a very hard schedule for the Matildas and our agreement with our head coach, Tony Gustavsson, was that he needed to play against top team nations and he needed to give young players an opportunity to get match minutes and time against big nations. It was very challenging at the start because we lost a lot of games and in some games, we lost quite badly.”

Australia’s quarter-final defeat to South Korea at the Women’s Asian Cup was a particularly disappointing result, Johnson mentioned.

“So we had some challenges early on, but what we’ve seen in the past 12 months is that strategy paying off. And in the last six months, in particular, the Matildas have beat several big nations – They’ve beat England, Sweden, Spain and France.

“Now look, these are only friendly matches, so we’re not getting too far ahead of ourselves, but what I can say is the team is as well prepared as they could be as part of our legacy program.”

Australia, who have never gone beyond the quarter-finals at the World Cup, face Nigeria in their second group game on Thursday before taking on Olympic champions Canada.