“Princess is a game-changer,” was how Matildas head coach Tony Gustavsson described his goalscorer following Australia’s 1-1 draw with Portugal.
Sydney FC star Princess Ibini came off the bench to score her first Matildas goal before Portugal earned a draw in the 87th minute on Wednesday (AEST).
Ibini, who netted five goals as Sydney reached the Liberty A-League Grand Final last season, had been called up by the Matildas for the first time in two years this international window.
The 22-year-old capped her eighth Australia appearance with a goal – breaking a deadlock in the 73rd minute in Estoril, where she was a half-time substitution.
“It’s a no-brainer, right? Princess is a game-changer,” said Gustavsson.
“Coming in at half-time and not only scoring but showing that she wanted to be a part of this and that’s something we talked a lot about.
“We spoke about it today in the pregame meeting that the game-changers needed to be ready to play the game from the bench, read the game, know what it’s like.
“So when they come in, they have a good idea what it looks like. Princess came in and made a really big impact.”
The Matildas responded to their 7-0 mauling at the hands of Spain over the weekend.
Lydia Williams came into the starting XI in an historic appearance – wearing the captain’s armband, the A-Leagues legend became the first female Australian goalkeeper to play 100 matches for the Matildas.
After Ibini gave Australia the lead with 17 minutes remaining, hosts Portugal restored parity three minutes from the end.
“I have mixed emotions, to be honest. I’m very disappointed that we lost this game, considering we were up one-nil with very few minutes left, Gustavsson said.
“We talked about game management, time management, smart decisions on the ball. We should’ve got away with a win, but we had a little bit of an inexperienced team on the field and that’s the tough learning when you make a mistake like that [conceding].
“We have a much less experienced team than when we played Portugal in 2018 when we tied and lost, and now we were actually about to win the game so in that sense, from a performance perspective there were some positive answers.”
Gustavsson saluted the mental strength of his players following the humbling loss to Spain on Sunday (AEST).
“A lot of teams would be devastated, low in energy and maybe stopped believing, but there’s a really true belief in this core group of staff and a core group of players and they know that we need to go through this tough experience to come out a better team,” he said.
“What I’d say is the first half was really tough mentally because the wind was really hard and you saw all the technical mistakes that we made in the first half.
“The wind was killing us. Then in the second half, when we had the wind with us, there was better technical execution.”
