The Matildas have made it through to the next round of Olympic qualifiers ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
With three recent wins in Perth under the belt, including Wednesday night’s 3-0 win over Chinese Taipei, they are now due to face Uzbekistan twice in February – once at home in Australia, and once away.
This week, Matildas defender Steph Cately said that she’d like to see the Matildas play their home game in February at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which has a capacity of 100,000 people. It would be the biggest Matildas crowd ever, and the biggest crowd for a women’s sporting event, ever.
Recently, a women’s volleyball match in Nebraska broke a world record for the largest crowd at a women’s sporting event in history, with 92,003 people.
The exact date of the game is not yet confirmed, but the Matildas could run into a problem if it’s scheduled on February 16, 17, or 18.
Why? Taylor Swift is already booked into the MCG with three nights of sell out shows.
Football Australia CEO James Johnson told Nine’s Today show that the sporting body will be looking for the “biggest” venues possible for the Matildas.
“Once we know where we land we’ll get the dates of the next match. That will be in February but it will be one of two match days,” Johnson said.
“As soon as we have confirmation of what that match day is we’ll be looking for the biggest stadiums available for the Matildas to play in.”
Johnson said the prospect of the Matildas selling out the MCG was definitely a possibility.
It would be “exciting, wouldn’t it? And we fancy our chances of selling it out,” he said.