Given it encompassed two Olympic Games, an Asian Cup, a home Women’s World Cup and a pandemic, it feels like Tony Gustavsson’s Matildas tenure lasted a lot longer than four years. That feeling perhaps lessened the impact of Thursday’s announcement that the Swede and Football Australia had mutually agreed to part ways.
No coaching tenure is perpetual, and even before his side’s ignominious group stage exit from the Paris Games, there was a sense that a point has been reached where the clean break that the end of his contract offered – as opposed to a sacking – was in the best interest of all parties involved. It was something the 50-year-old had increasingly reflected on in the months leading into the Games, meditating not just on whether remaining coach of the Matildas was the right move for him, but if he remained the right coach for the Matildas.
