Stajcic has faith in his Matildas

FOR the past year or more Matildas coach Alen Stajcic has been trying to build the depth of his squad — now he’ll find out the hard way how successful that mission was.

As the Matildas prepare to face Norway early tomorrow in their opening game of the Algarve Cup, Stajcic revealed that half a dozen of his key players have been sidelined through injury, with Steph Catley and Hayley Raso likely to join absentees including Kyah Simon and Caitlin Foord. Just a few weeks before the Asian Cup, it means Stajcic must put his faith in the extended squad he has tried to build up for the past 12 months, in the invitational tournament in which Australia will also play China, Portugal and one other game.

Though Catley, Raso and Simon are expected to be fit for the Asian Cup, Stajcic professed himself happy to test understudies keen to prove their own worth.

“Steph Catley and Hayley Raso will probably miss this tournament and we’ve had a few blows — the semi-finals and the final of the W-League were pretty harsh for us in that sense,” he said.

“But the goal of the last year was to increase the depth and expose a far wider group of players to the pressures of international football and the way we want to play. I’m still confident that every player who comes in will know our style and understand their job. We deliberately used 20-25 players over the last year, and the squad has that self-belief as a result.”