Defeated 18-0 By Australia, Coach: Now We Have To Build Better Women's Football

JAKARTA - The coach of the Indonesian women's national team, Rudy Eka Priyambada, admitted that the absence of good women's football coaching was one of the reasons his team suffered a major defeat to Australia.

Indonesia lost 18-0 to Australia when they played the inaugural match of Group B of the 2022 Women's Asian Cup, Friday, January 21 evening, at Mumbai Arena Football, India.

Rudy assessed that the difference in the quality of the two teams was very clear in this match. The Australian squad has high flying hours on the European stage, while the Indonesian players have only started the competition in the last two years.

"The Australian squad contains players who play in Europe, while Indonesia only started the second women's league last year and it was stopped midway due to the pandemic," said Rudy in a press statement after the match.

Australia went down with the best squad in the match against Indonesia. They have a line of star players like Samantha Kerr who plays with the Chelsea women's team.

Australia managed to control the game throughout the game. They showed Indonesia that there was such a stark difference both tactically and in the quality of the players.

"We took a lot of lessons, especially I hope we have to build better women's football in the future," Rudy said in his post-match press conference.

In this match, Sam Kerr, who is the second best player in the FIFA world, managed to show his class. He managed to score five goals against Indonesia which was guarded by Fani Supriyanto.

Australia got another goal through Caitlin Foord, Mary Fowler, Hayley Raso (two goals), Ellie Carpenter (two goals), Emily van Egmond (three goals), Tameka Yallop, Kyah Simon, Aivi Luik, and an own goal by Shalika Aurelia.

The defeat to Australia made Indonesia still at the bottom of the group. Zahra Muzdalifah and his friends will next meet Thailand on Monday, January 24, following against the Philippines three days later.