Sermanni: I want to see our improvement continue against Colombia
CommBank Matildas Interim Head Coach Tom Sermanni said that he was expecting a tough, physical game against Colombia on Thursday morning (AEDT).
He was speaking to the media at the official pre-match press conference in San Diego ahead of the team’s final match of the SheBelieves Cup.
“It will probably be more of a Brazil-style game that we had late last year,” he said, referring to the two-game series against Brazil in November and December.
“They’ve got a couple of outstanding players in the lineup. We need to look after them. Being South American, they’ve got a certain rhythm and a certain way of playing that’s a little bit different to the Japanese and a little bit different to the Americans.
“So there’s all those factors to take into account in this game tomorrow.”
He confirmed that all of the squad would be available, and there would be more rotation in the starting eleven after the first two games.
However, he said that forward Holly McNamara was unlikely to make an appearance as her minutes continue to be managed after only recently returning from her third ACL rupture.
“We’ve got to be really careful with her,” he explained.
“She’s come back, she’s done extraordinarily well to come in at this level and handle it the way she has done. But it’s someone that we need to be very careful with at this stage.
“At this moment in time, my ideal would be for her not to play tomorrow, because we need to make sure that she goes away from this healthy.”
Sermanni has stressed from the beginning that this tournament was part of preparations for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2026™.
“The key thing is how well the team is going to be able to prepare for that between now and next March, and hopefully we go into that tournament with a fully fit and healthy squad,” he said.
“At the same time, [we need to] have the balance in that squad with some players who we hope are going to push through, who are on the fringes of the team at the moment, and then you hope that your senior key players are going to turn up and perform really well.
“As a nation, we need to start to look and plan ahead to what we’re actually going to do, not just next year, but many years after that. We need to start to look at how we resource and how we work through the system coming in behind the national team.”
Sermanni’s priority in the immediate future is seeing the team’s improvement continue into the third and final match against Colombia.
“We had a pretty serious chat after the first game, and I think the players responded magnificently in the second game,” he said.
“In fact, when you look at the stats, we actually won more challenges in that game than we have [in any one game] since the beginning of 2023.
“So there was a really good improvement, and I want to see that continue tomorrow.”
CommBank Matildas v Colombia
Date: Wednesday, 26 February 2025 (local) / Thursday, 27 February (AEDT)
Kick-off: 4.37pm PST (local) / 11.37am (AEDT)
Venue: Snapdragon Stadium, San Diego (CA)
Broadcast: Paramount+
Tickets: ussoccer.com/shebelieves/cup