Cooper: Goal now is to come back every year

CommBank Junior Matildas Head Coach Michael Cooper has praised his side's resilience and competitive spirit following their narrow exit from the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup™, following a 1-0 defeat to Mexico in their final group stage game. 

As the CommBank Junior Matildas competed in their first-ever FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup™, they started their campaign with a historic first point in a 1-1 draw with Chile, then went down 3-1 to two-time champions, Spain, and in a must-win clash to advance to the knockout stages in their first-ever tournament, went down narrowly 1-0 to Mexico. 

"Really proud of the whole experience on and off the field in the three games. We set a task to show up and compete in all games, and I think we've done that."

"Today, we just failed to create any clean possession in the final third, and as a result, not many goal-scoring opportunities. So that's why we fell down today."

"Finishing third in a tough group isn't bad going for our first-ever Under-17 Women's World Cup. To come third is something we can take as a positive, but you always want more."

With the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup™ now occurring every year, the side doesn't have long to wait until the campaign to qualify again starts, with a number of the squad that featured in the first-ever campaign still eligible for next year's.

"Hopefully, the goal should be to come back here every year now. Seven of the players in this squad can come back next year. They're age-relevant again, so those seven will hopefully give the experience that the next group needs to qualify."

"I think as a country, we need to set the target to come here each and every year. It's so good to see all the other countries, see what players they have and their systems that they play and the game's growing, and we need to grow with it"

Cooper's CommBank Junior Matildas side featured a number of players that are in A-League Women's squads, headlined by captain Willa Pearson, who at only 15 years old has taken plenty of experience from the tournament.

"They can take this experience, add it to their future. They're only going to get better from it. So now we've got to support them back home to learn, develop, and use this experience to be better."

"I'm really looking forward to where some of these will go, and I'm sure we'll see one or two in the Matildas, and that should be our goal. But we need more than one or two."

The side finished as third in Group F, missing out on a spot as one of the top four best third-placed teams, having only picked up one point from their three games.

"Yeah, the girls were very emotional, upset, and Ruby Sullivan said to the girls, you know, let it hurt, and I respect that in a sense because if it hurts, you want to do something about it to be the team that's on the winning end in the future."

"It's good that it hurts, but we've got to put this into a positive learning opportunity moving forward."