Poletti 
Casey Stoney during her time as manager of Manchester United. Photo: Flickr - James Boyes CC BY 2.0.
With Tony Gustavsson leaving his role as coach of the Matildas by mutual agreement following the 2024 Paris Olympics after they were eliminated in the group stage, Football Australia is now on the hunt for a new coach.
With the Paris Olympics marking the end of a “cycle”, with no major tournament between now and the 2026 Asian Cup which will be hosted by Australia before the 2027 Women’s World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, the timing of being able to bring in a new coach does not get much better.
Round Ball Australia takes a look at who some of the options could be to become the next coach of the Matildas.
Ante Juric
Currently coach of the Sydney FC Women’s side, Juric only does one thing. Win.
Sydney FC have made seven consecutive Grand Finals with Juric at the helm, winning three. He has also guided them to three premierships, all coming in succession from 2020/21-2022/23, and they have never finished outside the top three under his leadership.
Juric’s skill-set extends far beyond just winning, and he excels in his scouting and player development. He seemingly plucks skilled players out of the NPL, often surprising people with some of his selections, and turns them into fantastic quality players through his coaching and development skills, allowing them to dominate the competition and move on when the time is right and repeating the process.
He is also a great player manager, with very few of his former and current players having a bad word to say about him. In fact, quite often they can not praise him enough when asked about the Sydney FC coach.
The biggest roadblock that would prevent him is his Sydney FC contract. He recently signed a one-year extension to his current deal, which sees him at Sydney FC until the end of the 2025/26 season.
Although players and coaches leaving contracts early is not unheard of, leaving a deal 18 months early might be a stretch too far in this instance.
Melissa Andreatta
Football Australia have previously recruited internally for the Matildas role, appointing Ante Milicic as interim head coach in 2019, when he was the under-20’s men’s coach at the time for the federation.
Appointing Andreatta, while it would be an internal recruitment, would be under different circumstances to Milicic’s appointment. She is currently the head coach of the under-23’s women’s side, being appointed to the role in 2022 as the sides inaugural coach, while also acting as one of the Matildas assistant coaches.
In short, she knows the players, the systems, the development pathways, the scouts and scouting network, which players are coming up through the ranks and how skilled they are, amongst many other things as it relates to the Matildas.
She is also a talented coach in her own right, winning the premiership with Brisbane Roar in the then W-League in 2018, and has also coached a number of current international players during her time at Brisbane, including Mackenzie Arnold, Katrina Gorry, Kaitlin Torpey, Indiah-Paige Riley (New Zealand), and Hayley Raso.
If there was an ideal time for Andreatta to be made the coach, this is it. Some player retirements will come following the Paris Olympics, and those players will need to be replaced. It would be a good thing to have someone who already knows the players in the squad and those on the periphery and coming through the ranks to make those decisions, rather than having to bring someone new in who has to do their own scouting and may not be familiar with a lot of the players.
Casey Stoney
The former San Diego Wave coach has some familiarity with Australian players already, having signed Emily van Egmond and Kaitlyn Torpey to be part of the side, before she was let go from the role earlier this year following a seven game winless streak.
Stoney, the San Diego Wave’s inaugural head coach, won the NWSL Shield (regular season title) in 2023, before losing the semi-finals to OL Reign.
She was an experienced player during her career as a defender, earning 130 caps for England across a 17 year international career, and five for Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics.
Stoney has also spent time at top level clubs in England, playing for Arsenal and Chelsea, and before her time at San Diego Wave, coached Manchester United, winning the FA Women’s Championship in her first season in charge.
The main drawback to appointing Stoney would be that she has not coached at international level, with no guarantee her style and tactics would suit the international game, which is also a concern with the next coach in this article.
Joe Montemurro
A decorated coach in the women’s game for a number of years, many people have been calling for Montemurro to take the Matildas job for quite some time, and he is certainly the fan favourite for the job.
Having won multiple trophies at almost every club he has been at in the women’s game and boasting a 74 per cent win rate across his time at Melbourne Victory, Melbourne City, Arsenal, and Juventus, his resume speaks for itself.
Much like Stoney, there is concern about whether his coaching style and tactical philosophies would translate to the international game, but the biggest roadblock in the way of this deal is that he is less than two months into a two year deal with Lyon.
Lyon are a powerhouse in women’s football, and opportunities to coach a club with the reputation and resources to match its storied history do not come along every day, and so it would be unlikely that Montemurro would leave the position so quickly after joining.
Gary van Egmond
One of the more famous names in Australian footballing circles, Gary van Egmond has been around the game for an incredibly long time and has the resume to match.
Previously a Matildas assistant coach from 2015-2019, followed by stints as coach of the Young Socceroos and the Olyroos, he is familiar with the setup of the national sides and what it takes to generate success at this level.
He has also found success at club football, winning the A-League Men championship with the Newcastle Jets in 2008, and set the Newcastle Jets women’s side up as technical director and then as coach to take advantage of the rise in women’s football, which saw the side win its first ever finals match after his departure in the 2023-24 A-League Women season to take a role with the Chinese FA.
The role, which saw him become the coach of the under-17 Women’s side, ended after just a few months following China’s fourth place finish at the tournament and failing to qualify for the under-17 World Cup, which led to his departure by mutual agreement.
In an interview with the Newcastle Herald in July, van Egmond said that he really wants to coach and is looking for a new project but is not in any rush.
With player retirements, injuries, and a year with no major tournaments coming up to really embed systems and tactics and find the right balance of players within the squad sounds like an interesting project from the outside, but would it be enough to entice van Egmond back into the national team setup if Football Australia wanted him?
There is only one way to find out.