\n<\/p>\n
Steph Catley and Caitlin Foord both started Australia\u2019s 1-0 friendly defeat at home to Mexico on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing, but there\u2019s also the realisation that we\u2019re at the very start of a journey towards the World Cup,\u201d Catley said after the game.<\/p>\n
There was an opportunity to respond on Tuesday though, when Matildas got revenge on Mexico with a 3-1 friendly win.<\/p>\n
Foord wore the captain\u2019s armband for her country and scored on her 150th Australia appearance, demonstrating excellent strength to turn away from her defender and place the ball inside the far post for Australia’s third of the night.<\/p>\n
Foord is now the third joint-highest top goalscorer for Australia with 41 goals.<\/p>\n
Catley also played the full 90 minutes on Tuesday<\/p>\n
Speaking after the game, Foord said: \u201cTo reach 100 is obviously huge, and for myself, 150 as well. It\u2019s nice to enjoy these moments together, and celebrate them, which we have during this series.\u201d<\/p>\n
In FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup qualifying, Alessia Russo<\/strong> played the full 90 minutes, Chloe Kelly<\/strong> came on in the 64th minute and Lotte Wubben-Moy<\/strong> was an unused substitute as the Lionesses got back to winning ways with a 3-0 victory over Ukraine at Everton\u2019s Hill Dickinson Stadium.<\/p>\n Russo assisted Georgia Stanway for England\u2019s second goal of the game.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t enough to ensure automatic qualification for the World Cup though, so, after finishing second in Group C on 15 points (only behind Spain on goal difference), Sarina Wiegman\u2019s side will have to go through the play-offs in October.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s nice to come back to England, play in front of all of our fans and get a win,\u201d Russo said. \u201cWe also wanted to qualify automatically for the World Cup but now we\u2019re going to the play-offs and that\u2019s tough but it\u2019s football. We had the toughest group playing Spain and we won five out of six games and have still not gone through.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Spain, Mariona Caldentey<\/strong> played the first half of their big 6-1 win away to Iceland on Tuesday, racking up the goal difference and qualifying for the World Cup with aplomb.<\/p>\n Also going into the play-offs are Sweden following their 2-2 draw at home to Italy. It was a spirited comeback from 2-0 down with Smilla Holmberg <\/strong>and Stina Blackstenius<\/strong> both playing the full 90 minutes to finish third in Group A with eight points from six games.<\/p>\n Emily Fox <\/strong>was in international friendly action for USA, playing 90 minutes of Saturday\u2019s 2-1 friendly defeat away to Brazil, and then the first half of Wednesday\u2019s 1-0 friendly win away to Brazil.<\/p>\n Olivia Smith <\/strong>got 63 minutes under her belt as Canada thumped Costa Rica 6-0 away from home on Wednesday in a friendly.<\/p>\n At under-23s level, Anne Borbe <\/strong>came on at half-time in Germany\u2019s 2-2 friendly draw at home to Denmark on Monday.<\/p>\n As for England under-20s, Laila Harbert, Cecily Wellesley-Smith, <\/strong>and Vivienne Lia <\/strong>all started Tuesday\u2019s 1-0 friendly defeat to Japan in Pinatar, while Jessie Gale<\/strong> began on the bench.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steph Catley and Caitlin Foord both started Australia\u2019s 1-0 friendly defeat at home to Mexico on Saturday. \u201cIt\u2019s disappointing, but there\u2019s also the realisation that we\u2019re at the very start of a journey towards the World Cup,\u201d Catley said after the game. There was an opportunity to respond on Tuesday though, when Matildas got revenge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}