Matildas v Mexico LIVE: Gustavsson sticks with tried and tested for Texas friendly

No prizes for predicting the obvious, but yes, as predicted, Catley’s at centre-back and Torpey is at left-back. Meanwhile, it appears as if Gustavsson is running with a 4-4-2 with Mary Fowler floating behind Michelle Heyman and Emily van Egmond in a deeper midfield role next to Kyra Cooney-Cross, which is… interesting. Most Matildas fans find her much more effective further up the field. And we haven’t really seen Clare Wheeler in there with Cooney-Cross either.

Anyway a solid start from both teams. The Matildas are indeed trying to play through that Mexican press and are doing so to mixed effect, but no real chances of note yet at either end.… actually, wait, there’s one. There’s a goal for Australia!

Wonderful work there by Hayley Raso to pick up the ball at the top of the box, find space and sweep home a well-placed shot into the bottom corner. That’s a great finish to cap off a great move by the Matildas.

Mexico 0-1 Australia, 10 minutes

It has begun. The Mexicans have just kicked off. They are attacking the left side of this live blog, the Aussies to the right.

How good is morning football, just quietly? We should do this more often.

Not quite like seven inches from the midday sun, but it is 31 degrees and sunny in San Antonio, and it’s still around 6.30pm-ish over there. Which makes this a test in more ways than one for the Matildas – and coach Tony Gustavsson has just spoken on Channel 10, saying that Mexico were selected as their opponents because, like Olympic group stage foes Germany and the USA, they’re a high-pressing team. This should then be a good bit of practice for them. But it will be hard yakka in that sort of heat.

Fair to say we don’t know too much about them. But we do know that women’s football is a rapidly developing space and that the teams we used to think could be brushed aside with relative ease are much better than we might imagine.

Mexico is the world’s No.31-ranked side in the women’s game. All of the players in their squad come from the domestic Liga MX Feminil or the US National Women’s Soccer League, including some diaspora players from north of the border. We know all about Ancestry.com signings here in Australia, don’t we?

At their last major tournament they were beaten in the semi-finals 3-0 by Brazil at the CONCACAF Gold Cup – but in the group stage, believe it or not, they actually beat the Americans 2-0. The US fielded an extremely strong team too, featuring the likes of Lindsay Horan, Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith, Lynn Williams, Crystal Dunn, Rose Lavelle … the list goes on.

The Yanks might be at a historically low ebb, as they await the start of Emma Hayes’ reign as manager in the coming weeks – but it’s still something to knock them off.

I tuned into yesterday’s pre-match press conference, featuring Gustavsson and Catley, where they both spoke about how confident they are in the Matildas’ depth options.

It’s a bit of a worry, though, that Gustavsson still doesn’t know whether Hunt and Gorry in particular will be fit for Paris. Kerr, bizarrely enough, hasn’t been officially ruled out yet either, but we all know she won’t have recovered from her ACL injury in time – even her father, Roger, has said that publicly.

You can read my report on all of the above, which details the full extent of the team’s fitness crisis, right here.

For all the talk of an experimental line-up… Gustavsson has selected a fairly straightforward starting XI.

Three guaranteed starters – Clare Hunt, Katrina Gorry and Sam Kerr, of course – are all out through injury, and it looks like they’re going to at least start this match with what would be their strongest possible line-up in the event that that trio does not make it for Paris 2024.

So we’ve got stand-in skipper Steph Catley most likely shifting into Hunt’s centre-back role, with Katilyn Torpey at left-back, plus Emily van Egmond in midfield for Katrina Gorry and Michelle Heyman, of course, up front where Kerr would usually be.

No Clare Wheeler. She’s on the bench.

We can only assume the experimentation will come later in the match.

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the Matildas’ friendly against Mexico. I’m Vince Rugari and I’m very much looking forward to this one. I hope you are too.

This match, being played in San Antonio, Texas, is one of just three fixtures locked in for Australia ahead of the Paris Olympics. With so many players currently sidelined there is plenty of intrigue as to how coach Tony Gustavsson will set them up and how they’ll play here.

Speaking of which – team news is coming up in just a moment.