Young gun Matilda’s defender Ellie Carpenter spoke into the universe about their upcoming Asian cup campaign.
Following an impressive Olympic campaign, the expectations on Australia to win are higher than ever before and Ellie Carpenter intends to use the added expectations as motivation.
“Coming off the back of our Olympic campaign, coming fourth at the Olympics, there’s a little bit of expectation now for us to win this Asian cup and I think for us we should win it,” Carpenter said.
“I think the expectation is good for us. We want to win the tournament so we want to put that pressure on ourselves to be able to win this, and to do that we need to back up good performances.
“We need to win this and we know we can if we play our best football and bring what we bought during the Olympics to every game here.”
Carpenter shut down any concerns arising around the Matilda’s defensive depth and said they aim to keep clean sheets in every game throughout the tournament.
“The last couple of games we were testing out a few new players on the backline; that’s one area that we’re looking for depth in those positions but obviously this is a different tournament now.”
Along with a new tournament comes new tactics, Carpenter was glad to see new faces in camp including Swede Jens Fjellström who was bought in by Gustavsson to give the this Matilda’s side something they’ve not had before.
“It’s nice to get into camp and bringing some new faces in like Jens, new tactics and new work that we haven’t had before so its fresh from him.
“He’s very intelligent and he knows his stuff, he’s really good for our team; bringing in extra analytics and ways to beat other teams, his insight is really important to us especially in tournament mode.
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Carpenter also highlighted the competition not only within the tournament but also inside the camp as she said each player is fighting for a spot in the startling line up.
“The new girls that have come in have really pushed the bar, especially for starting spots, so it’s been a very competitive camp.
“We know what we need to do to lift that trophy and we’re preparing in every way to do that, we’re ready.”
Carpenter beamed confidence and has her eyes on the prize in the upcoming Asian cup which kicks off Friday night where they’ll face Indonesia.
Feature Image credit: Rachel Bach
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