Australian women’s soccer team Matildas fail to qualify for London Olympics
In a recent match, the Australia’s women soccer team was not successful in qualifying for the London 2012 Olympics despite the fact that they were able to defeat the South Korean side by 2-1.
During the close encounter, the Matildas found themselves standing on third position while the second position went to the North Koreans. The Asian Olympic qualifying tournament was won by Japan, the team that is also the world champion.
The tournament consisted of five teams in all and took place in China.
One valuable team member from the Australian team could not show case her skills in her team’s integral match. Kyah Simon was not able to play because of an injury she suffered while playing against the Chinese.
The Matildas started the match with one goal down but were able to come up from behind in order to tie the match and achieve a win in the end.
Despite the non qualification for the Olympic Games next year, the coach of the Matildas, Tom Sermanni, was proud of his team and expressed himself in the following manner: "I was very proud of the effort and the character our players showed to come back
in the second half to win the game. When you consider we lost two of the first three games, the tournament could easily have gotten away from us and been a non-event. The way that we've come back demonstrates the character of this group of players. If you
look at all the games in this tournament, I don't think a team has come from behind to win."
Only the top two teams in the tournament have earned their tickets into the London Olympics next year. It is the third time that the games will be making their way to the city London. The first time that British city played host to the Olympic Games was
in 1908 while the second time the prestigious international sporting event came to the city was in 1948. After having hosted the Olympic Games next year, London will become the first city in the world to host the Olympics three times.
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