Football
AAP 8y

Matildas will learn lessons from Brazil friendly defeat - Alen Stajcic

Australia's women's team will enter the Olympics all the wiser for a 3-1 away loss to Brazil, coach Alen Stajcic says.

The Brazilians, aided by some home-town calls in the friendly at Fortaleza on Saturday, scored three times after Australian star Katrina Gorry was sent off.

Gorry was marched for second yellow card in the 50th minute, when the Matildas held a 1-0 lead in their sole warm-up for the Rio Olympics.

"When the game was 11 vs. 11, it was certainly more in our favour than it was for them," Stajcic told AAP from Fortaleza.

"Playing 40 minutes with 10 players against them just made it a little bit tough but they are all things you have to learn to deal with.

"Certainly the Brazilian ref didn't mind the odd 50-50 going their way a little bit but again you have got to deal with these things when you play in a foreign country with a foreign ref."

Stajcic praised his players' composure amid a string of questionable calls at the Estadio Presidente Vargas.

"No-one likes to lose," he said.

"And we will look at things we didn't do so well and there are a couple of things we need to tighten up on.

"But the things we could control, which was our play and our defending, was quite good.

"You can't control the decisions of the referee sometimes. That made it a little bit of a challenge.

"And our players reacted pretty well I thought. We had good discipline and worked really hard when we were down to 10.

"They had to catch us on the break to get a couple of goals against us."

Australia's Olympic campaign opens against Canada in Sao Paulo on August 3, two days before the Games' opening ceremony in Rio, before group games against Germany (August 7) and Zimbabwe (August 10).

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