Look, if you want to understand how much Australian women's football has changed in sixteen years, picture this: when Melissa Barbieri's Matildas returned home after winning the 2010 Asian Cup, she remembers two cameras flashing at the team's arrival back in Australia, then having to ring news organisations herself to get more coverage. Now flash forward to this week, when the same team is preparing for another final and the nation can't talk about anything else.
Barbieri watched Thursday's events unfold from home, and the sight of the energy surrounding this group brought her to tears. That's what the contrast represents: not just more eyeballs on the game, but vindication of the work her generation put in when almost nobody was paying attention. Back then they played in front of 1200 people in the crowd. Now the Matildas will face Japan in the 2026 AFC Women's Asian Cup final at Stadium Australia in Sydney on Saturday night, with kickoff at 8pm AEDT.
None of this diminishes what Japan has done. Japan has now scored 28 goals in the competition, conceding just once, and they're a side that have lifted the AFC Women's Asian Cup title two times, first in 2014 and last in 2018. Fair dinkum, they're the team everyone's worried about. But here's the thing about Steph Catley, who will captain Australia on Saturday: she refuses to accept the narrative that Japan is some sort of force of nature that can't be touched.
Catley said that she could see the determination in the team after they secured their place in the AFC Women's Asian Cup 2026 final with a hard-fought win over China PR on Tuesday. When asked whether facing Japan shapes up as mission impossible, Catley doesn't believe the Asian Cup final against Japan is "mission impossible" despite their commanding tournament. She's got a point. While the Matildas have ground out tough results all tournament, Catley said that the team backs themselves to get the job done at the AFC Women's Asian Cup Australia 2026 final against a strong Japan team.
The path to the final hasn't been pretty. The Matildas eked past North Korea in the quarterfinal and beat China by the same narrow 2-1 margin in the semi. When you're building through a tournament like that, grinding out tight results, you learn something about yourself. You learn how to defend, how to find moments of quality when you need them. That defensive resilience might matter more than anyone's expecting on Saturday night.
What Catley emphasised is that Australia has beaten Japan before. She said "We've beaten Japan before. We have our own strengths I'm sure that they'll be looking at and they'll be worried about". At the end of the day, sport's funny that way; on the night, anything can happen. Japan might be the favourites, but Catley's not coming to Sydney to make up the numbers. She's coming to win.
For someone like Barbieri, watching from the sidelines, that confidence means everything. Her generation proved the Matildas belonged on the world stage. This generation has the chance to prove they can do it again, and this time, the whole country is watching.