In late September 2020, in his first media conference after being announced as the new head coach of the Matildas, Tony Gustavsson wore a pinstripe suit.
His hair was combed back, his tie was straight, and he'd folded a colourful silk handkerchief neatly into his jacket pocket.
He was nervous, of course, but he didn't show it.
He answered questions brightly, speaking with enthusiasm about the growing investment in women's football from his new employees, about his excitement for the 2023 Women's World Cup on home soil, and about how inspired he was by the "never say die" spirit of the team he was set to lead for the next four years. His energy and eagerness were infectious.
"People that have worked with me over the years know I am a very passionate person and a passionate coach," he said then.
"To balance my passion, I also need to work with what I call 'love and joy'. Passion, love, and joy.
"Love in the sense of loving the game, love to work with people, love the people for who they are, but seeing them for who they can become.
"I want to create a culture where we embrace differences and work together every day to get one day better, as an individual and as a team."
It's been just over two years since that first media conference and Gustavsson looks — and sounds — a little different now.
He's dressed more casually today: a mossy-green T-shirt, dark pants, white sneakers.
He also seems tired; not just from the months of global travel and the process of looking for a new house (having recently moved to Sydney with his family), but mostly, you sense, because of everything else.
"You always reflect and think about what you could have done better," he says, staring out the window of Valentine Sports Park in western Sydney.
"My mantra, when I talk about 'one day better', you need to reflect and learn from previous experience.
"As a player, as a coach, staff, we always review all the camps and talk about what can be done differently.
Everything from training content to meeting presentations to game plans to scheduling opponents to substitutions during games to camps prior to tournaments. All those things.
"So when I talk about 'one day better', it's not just the players. It's also me."
The first half of Gustavsson's tenure has been different and more difficult than he expected.
That is due, in part, to what he was asked to do from the very beginning.
When he was hired, half of his role was to address Football Australia's Performance Gap report, which found that the Matildas had one of the shallowest player pools of most comparable nations in the women's game, as well as one of the biggest gaps between their most experienced and least experienced players at the international level.
Gustavsson was asked to search far and wide for new players who could add depth, versatility, and competition to the team's small established core.
In the other half of his role, he was asked to prepare for — and, ideally, win — major tournaments.
Historically, Australia's performances against top-ranked nations in non-friendly games were "very bad, to be frank", so the other part of his job was to try to close that gap, too.
"I've been very ambitious in terms of creating depth and scheduling tough opponents, because those were two major improvement areas that the federation and I identified when I started this: that we need depth and we need to prepare the team to play top opposition when tournament time comes," Gustavsson said.
"So we said, can we increase the depth of the roster at the same time as we play tougher opposition? Yes, we can, if we have trust in the process and don't look at short-term results.
"In that sense, I'm happy for the backing from the federation that they believe in this process and that we're in it together."
His first major test, the Tokyo Olympics, came six months in.
The 20-player squad he took to Japan was the perfect illustration of the conundrum: just three players had fewer than 10 caps, six had between 20 and 40, while 11 had 70 caps or more.
However, that experience-heavy team went on to finish fourth — Australia's ever result at a Games.
That balance arguably tilted too far in the other direction at the Women's Asian Cup in February, where eight players had fewer than 10 caps, three had between 20 and 40, and nine had 90 or more. Australia was knocked out at the quarter-final stage by South Korea — the side's earliest exit from the tournament.
The dilemma became clear: how (and when) to balance development with success.
Between these major tournaments were the best opportunities to strike it: friendly windows in which the Matildas deliberately played opposition as highly-ranked as possible and from as many footballing continents as possible; yard-sticks for the team in terms of difficulty as well as style.
As of now, they've played more top-10-ranked nations in a shorter space of time than they have in the program's history.
These friendly results, in isolation, have not been flattering: three wins, four draws, and nine losses across 16 games.
In that period, though, Gustavsson has handed out more debuts than any coach before him.
This may be something he's praised for in years to come, but here and now, the losses have continued to pile up, and confidence — particularly from those on the outside looking in — has begun to wane.
"I don't regret it — that's not the right word — but maybe I should have put a couple more games in there for the sake of positive momentum and the confidence of the team," Gustavsson admitted.
"Maybe it was overambitious. But I'd rather be overambitious than being cowardly; not having the guts to do it.
"The 'me' of 10 or 15 years ago maybe would have done it differently — gain some popularity, win some easier games, get some false confidence in the player group that we can be successful — but then we come to a tournament and we're not ready for it.
"So no, I don't think it was overambitious in terms of having to look at new players and having to play tougher opposition. I stand by that. But maybe the percentage of that could have been a bit different."
Success, though, is in the eye of the beholder. Gustavsson has always had one eye on next year's home World Cup. Even when taking untested players to India in February, it was all part of the longer-term plan.
"For me, I love the fact that FA have a 'Legacy '23' program. For us, it's so much more than just 90 minutes of football at a World Cup; it's so much bigger than that," he said.
"It's about building a healthy, high-performance environment in the Matildas, with wellbeing at the forefront. A player-centric approach. More resources. We have more full-time staff working with the players now, that's one thing. We also look at infrastructures and pathways and investment in leagues and all those things.
"When you define success as something narrow, it's easy to get caught up in the 90 minutes of football and whether you won or lost. But sometimes you need to play scoreboard-blind, because it's too much about the scoreboard at times."
The pandemic added extra complexity to everything and affected his ability "to motivate, inspire, and connect" with his players and staff for most of the first year. He is a people-person; he likes to be in rooms and on fields, sharing ideas and energy, not hunched over laptops or trying to explain tactics via Zoom.
The pandemic aside, even just trying to juggle these two main responsibilities "hasn't been the smoothest."
Indeed, in no other comparable senior women's national team is the head coach expected to play such a large role in the acceleration of young and fringe players; most have technical directors and full-time youth head coaches who focus on that.
Poorly-timed injuries (most recently with an ACL tear to Kyah Simon and a broken shoulder to Alanna Kennedy) and the subsequent heavy rotation of players hasn't helped, either. Gustavsson has not fielded the same back four for more than two games in a row since April, and has struggled to get all of his strongest players together in the one window to refine the things he wants to.
He admits that this inconsistent squad coupled with the growing weight of the World Cup is starting to take its toll on the larger group.
"There's a deep understanding of where we are and where we're heading — that picture is very clear — but it's frustrating for them to not get the opportunity to put it all together into a complete performance that shows we're heading in the right direction," he said.
"They're all very different. Some of them are very used to [pressure] at their clubs. For some of them, it's completely new.
"But if the players have a mindset where, instead of saying 'how do they feel about expectations?' we could say, 'how do they feel about the belief and support they have from the nation?' it frames it in a different way.
"At the end of the day, when you talk about expectations, it comes from a belief that this team can do something unique. But it's also important to be fair to these players in what we can expect from each player every single moment."
As for how he himself is handling the harsher spotlight, he has developed his own athlete-like methods (which, as a former player himself, makes sense): sleep, exercise, eating healthy, meditating. He even finds time for hobbies like golf, racquet sports and films.
"I'm so used to it," he said.
"After over 20 years in this business, I've found strategies for how to deal with it. And the times when I get upset, when it's tougher for me, is when I feel my players are treated unfairly.
"I can take hits. I've taken hits throughout my career, I know what this job is about.
"You're never better than the last game: if I lost the last game, I'm not worth a lot, and if I win it, I'm probably looked upon as a better coach than I actually am.
"Someone told me you're never as good as you are after you're winning, and you're never as bad as you are when you're losing. You're always somewhere in between. I think I have a healthy perspective of that. But when it comes to the players, I can become more protective at times."
He's also taken inspiration from his former mentor, Jill Ellis, during their time with the United States women's national team. Ellis, the head coach, came under fire regularly throughout her tenure and taught her assistant some key lessons about how to manage it.
"The one thing Jill did a marvellous job with is the messaging: the belief in the process and making sure the staff and players all see and understand it," he said.
"So we say: what do we want it to look like in 2023? What's the end goal? We called it 'the perfect game' back then: what do we want that to look like? That was always crystal clear, so that if there was disturbance from the outside, she could always come back to that.
"She was very strong in her leadership; she didn't get pulled in different directions or by different opinions. She stood very firm in her leadership and where we were heading, and that impressed me.
"I think that was also one of the success factors to 2019 [Women's World Cup]: we had a year there, especially after the Olympics in 2016 where we lost in the quarter-final, where it was a process to rebuild and do things differently.
"Sometimes, when you change things, when you challenge the status quo, that can be difficult for people - internally and externally. But she did that in a very humble, educated, and nuanced way where she got people on board believing in the journey."
It was a surprise, he said, coming from the resource-rich environment of the USWNT — which budgets about $36 million per year for the women's programs — to the Matildas, which runs on a fraction of that.
That disparity extends further down the pyramid, too, so Gustavsson has had to reckon with trying to achieve success without the wider structural support he was afforded elsewhere.
"I've worked in club land, both in men's and women's; I worked in grassroots, at semi-professional level, at professional level, and sometimes, all it comes down to is resources," he said.
"When you come from a club or a federation that might be the richest in the world, it's always going to be different, a different challenge.
"That's another thing I've learned about the game in Australia that I didn't know when I took the job. I knew about the Matildas because I've sat on the opposition bench, but didn't know anything else about the pyramid, the whole youth system, the lack of resources; some of these things the federation helped me to educate myself and through my brilliant staff around me like [assistant] Mel Andreatta and [technical advisor] Rae Dower.
"If more people could see where the women's game is today and where it's heading, I think that would help. Because the more we can see where the world level is, the easier it is for us to see the path to the top of that mountain.
"The Euros was the latest example of that; speaking to Australians who went there, they said it was an eye-opening experience. They had no idea the game was at that level. I wish more people understood that."
So what does that path look like for the Matildas? What is 'the perfect game'?
"I think the perfect game for us is to make sure that we stay true to who the Matildas are," he said.
"Meaning, when you buy a ticket to go watch the Matildas, people know they're going to get their high-octane energy, attacking-minded, high-pressing, in-your-face style of football.
"Football where you play free from fear. When you run into the goal zone and create a lot of scoring opportunities. If the opponent scores one, we score two. That kind of mentality, which I think a lot of people saw in the first 45 minutes in the second game against Canada, and against Team GB at the Olympics. We also saw it in parts against the USA last year, where we had 19 and 17-year-old centre-backs and completely dominated them for 30 minutes.
"But the other thing with a perfect game is it's not just about football; it's also about what you want to see out there, who do we want to be with the fans in the stadium? How do we want to carry ourselves? It's so much more than just the football."
With the second half of his tenure now underway, starting with another friendly window featuring games against South Africa and Denmark, Gustavsson knows that he's still got plenty of learning to do. He wants to get one day better as much as anyone.
"Sometimes, when you learn, you get validation of the things you already thought about yourself, but you can get an eye-opener as well," he said.
"One thing that has been validated in me is how passionate I am about this team, about this federation, about growing football in Australia. I have fallen in love with this project and I've learned how hard I'm willing to work to do what's best for others, and maybe not what's best for me individually.
"I don't like the word 'impossible'. I see possibilities. I use a quote — I use quotes a lot, that's the teacher in me — but there's a quote I'm inspired by from a coach in the US, who was one of the most successful coaches in the history of basketball.
"He said: 'Success is peace of mind knowing you did your best to become the best you're capable of becoming.'
"I think, as a nation, if we talk about what we can do, it's to make sure we reach our full potential. We keep investing, we keep giving opportunities to be educated, having the time to train, having the resources, having the facilities.
"We need to break down the barriers and make the game easier to access so everyone can fall in love with it. If they fall in love with it, they stay in the game. If they stay, more are going to reach the world-class level. Or, if they don't get to the world-class level, at least we can create world-class citizens.
"That's where it all starts, and in the end, that's the only way we can get one day better."
