Australia’s Women’s Asian Cup campaign is well and truly back on track following an 8-0 win over an outclassed Vietnam in Jordan.
An opening scoreless draw against South Korea left little margin for error, but the Matildas responded in perfect fashion with a one-sided victory to sit on top of their group on goal difference.
The rout means Australia need to only draw their final group match against Japan to reach the semi-finals, and at the same time shore up one of five tickets on offer to next year’s Women’s World Cup.
Coach Alen Stajcic made seven changes to his side and one of those new faces, Kyah Simon, was first on the scoresheet.
Simon netted from close-range after seven minutes before Alanna Kennedy, Chloe Logarzo and Emily van Egmond ensured the match was effectively over as a contest by the half-hour mark.
Sam Kerr scored either side of halftime, while Hayley Raso and a Vietnamese own goal completed the tally.
“It was an up and down game from us,” said Stajcic.
“There was lots of good passages of play, but plenty of areas where we could have had better execution.”
In contrast to the first match, Australia found a huge amount of space to attack in their opponents’ half, also hitting the frame of the goal twice.
Despite the goal avalanche, there is still room for improvement with some of the team’s trademark attacking combinations missing on occasions.
“There were some careless losses of possession that I wasn’t very happy with,” Stajcic said.
“We have pretty high standards in our team and throughout the 90 minutes we were good at times.
“But if we are going to beat the likes of Korea, China and Japan at this tournament then we need to do better with the possession that we had tonight.”
South Korea and Japan played out a hard-fought 0-0 draw in the other Group B match.
- AAP