defeated the Philippines 1-0<\/a> in Sunday\u2019s tournament opener in Perth. Iran and South Korea \u2013 the other teams Group A \u2013 meet on Monday, before the Matildas play the Iranians on Thursday.<\/p>\nAfter the Matildas\u2019 opening match, Montemurro was asked about the role of football at times such as this. The coach said it was a \u201cgreat question\u201d, but added he did not want to speak about things that are \u201cnot in my remit \u2026 politics and so on\u201d.<\/p>\n
Instead, he described football as \u201can amazing family\u201d and the Asian Cup as an opportunity to showcase its athletes and people. \u201cWe\u2019re supporting the [Iran] team and supporting whatever comes, but we want to make sure that the focus is on football and giving moments and special situations to people,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we hope that we have a good game against Iran and we showcase how beautiful this game is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marziyeh Jafari, Iran\u2019s coach, with her captain, Zahra Ghanbari. An AFC official shut down a question to the coach about the Middle East crisis. Photograph: Dave Hunt\/EPA<\/p>\n
Earlier, an Asian Football Confederation official shut down a question to Iran\u2019s coach, Marziyeh Jafari, about the events of the past day, requesting that journalists focus on the game itself.<\/p>\n
Iran played its first Women\u2019s Asian Cup in 2022, and became the final team to qualify for the 2026 edition by upsetting Jordan 2-1 in Amman last year.<\/p>\n
Australia is expected to easily defeat the Lionesses on Thursday, despite a goalkeeper injury crisis that meant Chloe Lincoln, the fourth choiced, started against the Philippines.<\/p>\n
A Women\u2019s Asian Cup record crowd of 44,379 enjoyed the 1-0 victory even if they had expected more goals against a team the Matildas had beaten 8-0 in 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan we do better? Yeah, absolutely, but we\u2019re getting there,\u201d Montemurro said. \u201cThe more we grow into the tournament, the more we control these moments, the more we\u2019ll benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sam Kerr scored the only goal, the captain\u2019s first for Australia in 851 days after a long recovery from a knee injury. She said: \u201cI just wanted to get that first goal out of the way, it kind of felt like getting the monkey off my back \u2013 my first goal for the national team again \u2013 because I hadn\u2019t scored in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
She celebrated with her teammates after the goal, rather than perform her trademark backflip, but she said the acrobatics may come again in coming weeks. \u201cThe backflip\u2019s still on the cards, everyone keeps asking me that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Montemurro said he wants the focus before his Australia women\u2019s team\u2019s Asian Cup match against Iran on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-512002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}