History haunts the Matildas in group-stage loss to Germany at the Paris Olympics

How soon did the white-hot flashbacks begin for Tony Gustavsson?

Was it when Jule Brand tore into the Matildas’ penalty area before dinking past two scrambling defenders and sending her shot over the crossbar in the ninth minute?

Was it when Steph Catley tumbled into the grass clutching her head after being bodied out of the air during a German corner in the 14th?

Was it 10 minutes after that, when Marina Hegering left two Australian defenders in her wake as she leapt into the humid Marseille night to score the first of Germany’s three goals?

Or maybe it was before the game itself began, when Tameka Yallop was withdrawn from the squad through injury — yet another lick of bad luck in what has already been a bonfire of unluckiness in preparation for this Olympics.

Three years ago, in Gustavsson’s first friendly game as head coach of the Matildas, he watched his side get demolished 5-2 by a ruthless German team.

That result, he said at the time, was bad, but understandable: Australia was missing several key players, including Catley, Yallop, Ellie Carpenter, Katrina Gorry, and Kyra Cooney-Cross, and included several new ones, like Beattie Goad, Amy Sayer, and Indiah-Paige Riley, as the team began what would become a long-term rebuild. 

But Germany didn’t care. It tore through Australia with ease, scoring its first goal just 11 minutes into the game, before adding four more later on. The Matildas played like a team who’d only just met each other, and in some cases, it was true.

Only Emily Gielnik made the score-line slightly more respectable, scoring twice in the final 10 minutes to bring some semblance of competition back into the headlines.

Germany didn’t care on Friday morning, either. 

While its opening group game of the Paris Olympics may not have ended with the same score as three years ago, the same crumpling from Australia was there; the same exposed nerves, the same paralysed panic, the same capitulation to a ferocious German team that was faster, stronger, and better in every way.

Given Gustavsson had his strongest possible line-up at his disposal, even though some of them had limited minutes in their legs due to ongoing injury troubles, this result was not understandable. It was just bad.

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Almost from the opening whistle, the Matildas looked unfamiliar and under-done: their touches were a bit too big, their passes a bit too long, their decisions a bit too slow. 

Similar to the warm-up friendly against Canada a week ago, Australia seemed to be a half-beat behind its opponents, lacking the technical sharpness and tactical clarity that is required to go far in tournaments like these.

Foord, Hayley Raso and Cortnee Vine were regularly isolated out on the edges of the game, waiting like caged animals to unleash their speed in behind. But the passes rarely came, and the ones that did were hopeful more than thoughtful, and easily wrangled by the unhurried Germans. 

A few clever overlaps from Catley and Ellie Carpenter showed glimmers of the tactics we know, but when the final pass spun into the box, it rarely met another yellow shirt deliberately, with the crumbs of miscued clearances all they could rely on.

And despite the number of times Germany scythed a single pass through the guts of Australia’s midfield, the rejuvenated Katrina Gorry was possibly the team’s best, throwing herself around the pitch to make crucial last-ditch blocks before immediately scampering up to restart the play.

There were small pockets of progress. After Catley’s injury delay, the Matildas looked calmer, more structured, got some breath back in their lungs. Well-timed substitutes introduced fresher legs, with Sharn Frier and Michelle Heyman carving out their own solo half-chances through sheer stubbornness alone.

But again and again, the irrepressible Germans squeezed the spark out of them. And so the game rolled on.

Perhaps, when you boil it down, Australia’s best players were simply not ready for Germany’s best players. And even when it feels like they’ve come so far, the team has tumbled back to 2021 all over again.

“Congratulations to Germany; they were a class better than us tonight, that’s just facts,” Gustavsson said.

“We need to be really honest about that, and I said it to the players as well. You can clearly see that they’re up to the speed of international football. 

Germany, on the other hand, looked like it had been ready for this game for a while. 

Switching freely between formations and tactics, pouncing in transition one minute to controlling possession and breaking through lines the next, the Germans played like a team that knows it doesn’t have time to warm into a tournament that has just six games between them and gold.

Jule Brand epitomised Germany’s ferocity best: the young winger, who scored two minutes after coming on back in that 2021 game, danced through the Matildas’ defenders with a kind of giddiness, knowing she was always a little bit quicker than whoever was trailing in her shadow.

She could have had two or three goals herself. But, as it turns out, she didn’t need them: two carbon-copy corners were all Marina Hegering and Lea Schueller needed to crystallise their game-wide dominance in a hard number.

Australia had been warned about that, too. But it let it happen anyway.

“Obviously we’re a bit upset that they scored on two set pieces, which we had planned for,” Gustavsson said. 

“Our scout identified that they’re very dangerous on that one: we trained it, we focused on it, but they still scored from two set plays.

“When they got the game to 1-0, they managed to get the game to where they wanted it: they sat back and transitioned on us. That’s not what Germany normally do, but it was tactically smart, and they hurt us in transition.”

So what now?

There is a longer history that haunts this side, and which could spell worse things to come. In Australia’s first ever Olympic Games, back at Sydney 2000, it lost by precisely this score-line to exactly this same opponent.

While it drew its next game, it lost the one after that, and was bundled out of the group stage.

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Are these bad omens? How much should we read into the past to understand the present? 

Perhaps, in the search for simple answers, we draw blunter conclusions from history than the nuance that reality requires.

It’s true that the Matildas are not at their same sharpness as they were at last year’s World Cup, with their bodies not nearly as well prepared as they were then. 

It’s true that they’re missing their best ever striker, who played a pivotal role in their last Olympics run in Tokyo, and whose leadership on and off the field was unquantifiable.

And it’s true that the rest of the world is also very good at football, particularly the runner-up of the Euros two years ago, who knows exactly how to win things like this because they’ve done it before. All of these things can be true at once.

“Is everything really bad? No,” Gustavsson said. 

“There’s parts in that first half when we moved the ball really well, and we can show that we can break teams down. But over 90 minutes, they were a class better than us.

“Could we have been better ready for this? Because we weren’t. And there’s frustration from the players as well because they’re trying, they’re trying, they’re trying. What we need to do is be real and say, ‘Okay, let’s use this as a wake-up call. We’re in international football now and we have no time to dwell.’

“But one thing that I know about this team is that when their back is against the corner, and there’s a lot of shit thrown at them, with curveballs in different ways … they never use these things as excuses.”

The explanation for today is somewhere within all of that. 

But it probably doesn’t make this performance feel any better, either for them or for us.