Tony Gustavsson knows as well as anyone how the teams stack up in a side-by-side comparison.
Australia‘s coach acknowledges England has more players with more impressive résumés than his Matildas can boast. He understands that England’s Football Association devotes more money to the Lionesses than Australia’s does to all of its national teams combined.
Gustavsson can probably also guess which country is the oddsmakers’ pick to win Wednesday’s marquee Women’s World Cup semifinal (coverage begins at 5 a.m. ET with kickoff at 6 a.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app) between the two sides in Sydney.
Hint: It isn’t his.
“If you look at rankings, they’re favorites,” Gustavsson said at his pre-match news conference on the eve of the game. “If you look at where their players play, they have starting players in top clubs in top leagues all over the world….