The CommBank Matildas were defeated 1-0 by Japan in a hard-fought battle in the AFC Women's Asian Cup Australia 2026 final. A first-half goal from Maika Hamano in front of 74,397 at Stadium Australia gave Japan their third Asian crown. The scoreline, though, scarcely tells the story of what unfolded at the venue on the evening of 21 March.
Japan were put under siege by the Matildas for large parts of Saturday's match, but the home side were unable to land a killer blow. In the second half especially, the Matildas applied relentless pressure, but the home side was unable to land a killer blow. Coach Montemurro reflected that his team created probably more chances than they had all tournament and didn't score. Caitlin Foord fluffed two major opportunities in the first half, shooting straight at the keeper after being set up by Mary Fowler and firing wide when gifted a glorious chance in the 35th minute. Kennedy had the best Australian chance late in the second half, but her header was comfortably caught by Yamashita.
The defeat extends what is now a 17-year wait for silverware stretching into a 17th year with the Women's World Cup in Brazil 15 months away. The Asian Cup final loss continues a run of near-misses for the Matildas this decade which includes semi-final finishes at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2023 World Cup. For a generation of players who have defined Australian sport over the past half-decade, the sting of near-misses has become numbingly familiar.
Yet here sits Joe Montemurro, just 10 months into his tenure as Matildas coach, refusing to concede that the moment has passed. Montemurro has reinvented the Matildas in just ten months since taking the manager's chair, with barely any time to train together as a squad, and emerges with credit given how quickly he has implemented his blueprint. Rather than close the book on Australia's golden generation, he is writing a new chapter.
Montemurro told his Matildas players after the game that they "should be so proud" despite going down 1-0 to Japan in the final, insisting that he isn't ready to say "bye bye" to the side's iconic stars just yet. After the match, he told the players: "You should be so proud to represent this country. You should be so proud of what you've done. Don't drop your heads. Let's keep going forward now, because we're at a very good point, a really delicate point, to go forward at the next stage. I'll be trying to keep the belief going."
Part of Montemurro's optimism stems from what the Matildas achieved on the night. The Matildas saved their best performance for the final, erasing concerns they would not compete in football terms with this Japan side. The tactical blueprint he has instilled in barely a year took shape when it mattered most. He reflected that the way the team played gave them belief that they could perform against the best teams in the world, saying that doing it against one of the top teams in the world in the way they did it gives the players belief.
But Montemurro's vision extends beyond salvaging the pride of an ageing squad. He wants to have greater involvement in the tactical direction of Australia's junior national teams to ensure would-be Matildas are ready to make an instant impact at senior level. Montemurro said: "We're trying to just spread this little Joe Montemurro, if you want to call it that, all over the national team spectrum. The thing for me is to make sure that our mentality is this type of football, the way we want to play. We want to dominate games, obviously, because that's what the best teams in the world are doing."
Montemurro is adamant the talent is there for Australia to remain competitive even if an established cohort headlined by Sam Kerr, Katrina Gorry, Steph Catley, Alanna Kennedy and Emily van Egmond will be the wrong side of 35 at the next Asian Cup in four years time. That is not complacency. It is a manager who has glimpsed what his team can become with time and coherence, and who refused to accept that a single defeat, however gutting, erases 16 years of achievement still to come.