For the victors, a place in the semi-finals of the women’s football competition. For the losers, a trip home and an Olympic dream extinguished.
And for Australia, the quality of their opponent is just one of their considerations.
Brazil’s football matches, both men’s and women’s, have been the blue-chip events across Brazil since the Games opened a week ago, with over 280,000 fans attending Brazilian football matches alone across six days of preliminary competition.
The capacity of Belo Horizonte’s Mineirão is just over 60,000 – which will set the backdrop nicely for a high stakes encounter between two sides with realistic aims of a podium finish in Rio.
“The bigger the crowd for me, the better,” said Australian coach Alen Stajcic.
“Obviously we know they’ll be cheering for Brazil and supporting Brazil, but the bigger the crowd the better for us.
“Whether it’s an advantage or a disadvantage, it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day the crowd are here to support the game and they don’t play the game.
“On the field it’s 11 v 11 and that’s the main thing.”
Australia comes into tomorrow’s match buoyed by their previous result against Zimbabwe, a convincing 6-1 win that saw five players find the back of the net.
The team has had seven unique goal scorers in Brazil, underlining their depth and quality in the final third, while at the back, the ship today seems far steadier than that which leaked two goals against Canada in São Paulo nine days ago.
As for Brazil, they fairly cruised through Group E, dropping only two points through a stalemate against South Africa three days ago.
Recent history shows that Brazil downed Australia in a pre-tournament friendly, 3-1 in Fortaleza.
That friendly victory exacted some measure of revenge for Australia’s World Cup triumph last year, which, interestingly, came at the identical knockout juncture of that particular knockout tournament.
“In 2004 Olympics Brazil beat Australia, in 2007 World Cup Brazil knocked out Australia, in 2011 Brazil knocked out Australia, so my memory is a bit longer than just last year’s (World Cup),” said Stajcic.
“But at the end of the day, all these matches are just a history and it’s a very good rivalry between the two teams but none of those matches affect tomorrow’s game.
“Whoever comes here tomorrow night and plays the better game will win.”
Australia has never appeared at the semi-final stage of an Olympic Games women’s football tournament, while Brazil has claimed silver twice – in 2004 and 2008.
Tomorrow’s match will kick off at 10pm Friday August 12 (11am Saturday August 13 AEST).
Ben Coonan
olympics.com.au