Sydney FC Women have kicked off their AFC Women’s Club Championship with a win over Iranian side Bam Khatoon.
Fiona Worts was on the scoresheet once again, netting her third in two matches for the club. With a three goal win in the bag, Head Coach Ante Juric is pleased his side have points on the board.
However, in order to help prepare for the match, he looked no further than the Australian Women’s National Team.
“We are very happy to get the three points.
‘That’s the most important thing in tournament football is getting points on the board and the Iranian team were very strong,” Juric said.
“I was really impressed in the manner in which we created our goals, especially the third one which was very good.
“For our first game, flying all the way from Australia a couple of days ago, we are really happy with this result.
‘We need to improve a lot more but I am very happy and as I said, the Iranian team was quite strong and they made it a real contest.”
Number 23, Fiona Worts, didn’t take long to get the scoring going, netting from the first set piece in the 3rd minute and she was happy to see her side come out with the three points.
“They [Bam Khatoon] play very differently to how our regular oppositions usually play so we had to adapt but we did very well to get off to a good start in the game and tournament,” Worts said.
“I hadn’t seen much of them before so I went in open minded but I thought they were very tough, both physically and technically and it was a really hard 90 minutes.”
Even with the far reaches of the internet, Ante Juric and his team found it difficult to find video footage of the team and had to rely upon the Matildas for help.
“We watched the Australia v Iran game from last week and I knew the coach and a few players are the same so we worked out they were going to set up quite defensively.
“We were able to get two matches, the Matildas game and another from 8 months prior and while there was different players, we knew the set-up would be very similar. However, it is one thing analysing them and another seeing them in the flesh,” he added.
“They [Bam Khatoon] should be proud of how they performed because I know it is much harder for them to play than it is for us in Australia so they should hold their heads up high.”
Next up for Juric and his players, is a clash with FC Nasef from Uzbekistan, kicking off on Thursday night at midnight (Friday 12am) with all the action broadcast live on the Uzbekistan FA YouTube Channel.
Match Details
FC Nasef (Uzbekistan) v Sydney FC (Australia)
Thursday 9th November 2023
Pakhtakor Stadium, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Kick Off: 12:00am AEDT (Friday midnight) (6:00pm UZT – Local)
Broadcast Live: Uzbekistan FA YouTube
