MELBOURNE, Australia — Arsenal forward Caitlin Foord scored two goals to lead Australia to a 4-0 win over Sweden in an international women´s soccer friendly match.
Foord has five goals in her past three internationals. Skipper Sam Kerr´s 37th-minute toe-poke, her first international goal since playing New Zealand in April, gave Australia the lead in front of 22,065 fans at AAMI Park in Melbourne.
Foord doubled the Matildas’ lead on 51 minutes and also netted in the 78th, five minutes after Mary Fowler´s deflected strike.
Foord said the team´s strategy has greatly developed over the past 12 months to better balance the team´s tactics.
“I feel like we´ve finally come together, found that sweet spot,” Foord said according to AP.
“We want to be an attacking team, want to be aggressive, and we play our best when we´re like that.”
It was the fourth meeting between the teams in less than two years. Sweden edged Australia 1-0 in the Tokyo Olympics semi-final, won a group stage match 4-2 and drew 0-0 in a pre-tournament friendly.
After two convincing wins over South Africa and Denmark in October, the Matildas’ slowly building momentum towards next year’s Women’s World Cup has gathered pace with an historic 4-0 thumping of world number two Sweden in Melbourne.
It was Australia’s first victory over the Olympic silver medallists since 1997: an entire generation of players removed from this current crop, including four starting players who had not yet even been born. It’s also the biggest winning margin the Matildas have recorded against a top-five nation in their history.
A first-half goal to Sam Kerr, which came against the run of play, put Australia up 1-0 at the break, but it was in the second half that the home side really came to life.
The Matildas slotted three more goals — including a brace to stand-out attacker Caitlin Foord — past the European Championship semifinalists to record not just a win over the highest-ranked nation since the USA in 2017, but also their first clean sheet since February’s Asian Cup.
It felt like a turning-point game for Australia in the Tony Gustavsson era, having shown glimpses in the past few international windows of the type of brave, attacking football — as well as the game management — that the Swede has been encouraging from the outset of his tenure.
However, it took some time for the Matildas to find their confidence and rhythm against the battle-hardened Swedish side, which was without a number of key players including influential midfielder Kosovare Asllani, captain Caroline Seger and lethal Barcelona winger Fridolina Rolfo.
