There are very few things that ignite a sense of national pride quite like a FIFA World Cup, and the events of last December — both on the ground in Qatar, and at the dozens of live sites across Australia — certainly proved that.
If you were out and about in the early hours of December 1 when Australia beat Denmark and advanced to the Round of 16 for the first time since 2006, you would’ve been forgiven for thinking we’d won the whole tournament. Flares lit up the streets and tears of joy streamed down the faces of football fans across the country. Australians became unprecedentedly united by little more than their pride in the Socceroos.
But if you ask Matildas goal-keeper Lydia Williams, not even that can prepare Australians for the pandemonium we’re about to witness when the FIFA Women’s World Cup hits our shores a little later this year.
“I don’t think Australia really knows what’s going to hit them with the World Cup,” Williams told Only Sports on the eve of the Cup of Nations final — which the Matildas went on to win.
“I think it’s going to be a shock, seeing African nations dancing and playing football in the streets and seeing what Argentina did in the men’s World Cup with over 2 million people in the streets celebrating. Australia just isn’t going to know what hit them.”
‘I don’t think they know’: Lydia Williams says World Cup hype is about to get real
The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup has seen unprecedented levels of demand, with more than half a million tickets sold so far — prompting the Matildas opening match against Ireland to be moved to a bigger venue to cope with the demand. And while Australians have questioned the seeming lack of domestic advertising for the competition, Williams assures me that the hype is certainly building overseas.
“It’s crazy! It’s insane that we’re a part of this. Seeing games getting moved to bigger stadiums, the demand going up, we’ve been on the other side of it being overseas and seeing how early it is growing,” says Williams.
Thanks to the success of Australia’s national women’s team, many of our players — including Williams — have picked up contracts overseas playing in the Barclays Women’s Super League and UEFA Women’s Champions League, which means their visits back home are few and far between. But according to Williams, this makes tournaments on home soil all that more special for the Matildas.
“I think it’s just pretty clear [that unlike some other international teams], whenever we have the opportunity to come home to Australia, EVERYONE wants to come home to Australia,” said Williams. “It really is like no place on Earth, and there’s no place like home.”
“To be here with what you grew up with, your family, the lifestyle, it really makes you appreciate that you are Australian.
“It’s just something in our culture that everyone is just so proud to represent the country in whatever sport it is, and when there’s an opportunity to play and be based here, it’s so exciting.”
Amid the chaos of playing for some of the most recognisable clubs in the world, Williams managed to squeeze in a visit back to WA last year, which served as a mental reset ahead of a gruelling World Cup campaign.
“I actually got to go home to Kalgoorlie about seven months ago and just be in the desert for a little bit and that was really nice to experience again because my phone didn’t work at all and it was really just the basic routine of going outside, swatting some flies, you’re in the dirt and it’s just good,” she said of her first trip back to Kalgoorlie in over eight years.
Williams is one of three goal keepers listed in the current Matildas squad (alongside Mackenzie Arnold and Teagan Micah), but with a slew of talented keepers to choose from, she knows it will be tough to secure her spot in Tony Gustavvson’s final 23-woman squad for the World Cup.
Understanding that the competition is tough and the standard is high when it comes to Australian goal keepers, Williams has moved from Arsenal to PSG, then to Brighton in the last 12 months to maximise game time and training ahead of the World Cup.
“The demands of what the World Cup brings, and with international football, you have to put yourself in the best position to perform for not only yourself but your teammates and you have to be in the right environment and sometimes that environment is playing, sometimes it’s a really good training culture,” said Williams of her decision.
“For me, experiencing three different places was just trying to find what is the right fit for me at this stage in my career and also what is going to help my teammates the most, so the recent move to Brighton is to chase game minutes and put myself in a position where I’m more of a look in.”
The realities of professional athletes on the move
Her last move is so recent, in fact, that she only arrived in Brighton one day before she was scheduled to fly out to play the Cup of Nations.
“It literally feels like yesterday. I literally just moved in the day before I left and all of my stuff has just been unpacked, so it really is just kind of starting to get familiar,” she said.
“But I think the one thing that athletes have that is quite unique is that they make friends and teammates quite quickly because you have to.”
While the club has been welcoming, Williams noted that finding somewhere to live was the hardest part, proving that the housing crisis isn’t any easier when you’re a world-class footballer.
“It has been a nice settling in phase to the club, probably the hardest part was trying to find an apartment but all of the football stuff is fine.”
“Seeing the legacy that it is going to leave behind is probably the most exciting thing,” – Lydia Williams
Within 24 hours of lifting the Cup of Nations trophy in Newcastle, Williams and the rest of the Matildas were back on a plane to the other side of the world, where the focus shifts back to club football until July. But the significance of what this year in football means to the country, particularly to young women, is something each of the players will hold dear in the coming months.
“So many young kids will have their ‘Cathy Freeman moment’ with our team and just kind of being a part of that legacy and culture is really exciting,” said Williams, who grew up idolising Freeman at the 2000 Olympics and will now inspire the next generation of female athletes.
“To be a part of the biggest sporting event for football, and women’s sport and to have that in Australia and New Zealand is really exciting and seeing us starting from the beginning of bidding, to winning it, to now it about to happen, seeing it come full circle and seeing the legacy that it is going to leave behind is probably the most exciting thing.”
It’s hard to grasp just how monumental having a World Cup — particularly a Women’s World Cup — in our own backyard really is. We’ve never had anything like this before, and even the 2000 Olympics was so long ago now that some of the Matildas weren’t alive to see it.
But as we head into the biggest year in women’s football we’ve ever seen, this is so much more important than what the Matildas actually achieve in the tournament. It’s about the legacy.
We’ve already started to see it throughout the Cup of Nations, in which hundreds of young kids donned the green and gold and lined the edges of the stadiums screaming their favourite players names.
This team, this World Cup, this year will go down in history as one of those defining moments that inspired a generation of athletes.
