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Here's a sentence for you: the Matildas are just three games away from lifting Australia's first ever World Cup trophy.
It feels kind of bizarre, doesn't it? Surreal in its simplicity. Like those 15 words shouldn't be sitting next to each other in that order, like they shouldn't mean what they mean.
For many long-suffering Australian football fans, what perhaps feels even stranger is that the above sentence is being increasingly spoken — both here and around the world — with genuine confidence. Genuine belief.
Following their backs-to-the-wall win over Canada and their mature performance against Denmark last week, Australia are playing the kind of football that many think can take them all the way to the podium.
That includes one of the game's most successful ever coaches, Jill Ellis.
As former boss of the USA, and the only person to win back-to-back Women's World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019, Ellis has a better understanding than almost anyone of what it takes to win this thing.
She's been keeping a particularly close eye on the Matildas during the World Cup, not only as the head of FIFA's Technical Study Group — which analyses data and trends from the tournament — but also as the former mentor of Tony Gustavsson, who worked as her assistant in both title-winning tournaments.
"You've got all the ingredients to go all the way," she told ABC Sport.
"I see a galvanised team. I see a team where people have had to step up. You don't win a World Cup with one player, you win a World Cup with 23 players.
"That adaptability, that willingness to do whatever it takes, is a key ingredient of being able to find a way to win. You've seen resolve coming back from a beating by Nigeria, to dig in, reset, refocus and beat Canada and Denmark.
"All the elements are there to trust this team to manage the moment. And, on top of that, you've got to have the talent. They're defensively solid. And with [Sam] Kerr coming back, [Caitlin] Foord's been incredible, [Hayley] Raso's been on fire: you've got the lot.
"And then you've got 75,000 green and gold people in the stands cheering behind you. That's an incredible motivator. So I think they've got a great shot."
She's taken pride in watching Gustavsson navigate his first World Cup as a head coach, having learned so much about managing tournament football alongside her. She has even noticed some of her iconic sayings — "one day better," "game-changers," "pressure is a privilege" — threaded throughout his own vocabulary.
Gustavsson hasn't always had it easy. He came into a Matildas set-up that was riddled with problems: a lack of squad depth, an unsettled team culture, stagnant tournament football, and chronic under-performance against the world's best teams.
It was lucky, then, in some ways, that he had been through some tough times alongside Ellis: like in 2016, a year after winning the World Cup, when the USA bombed out of the Olympic Games and had to basically start from scratch. Just like the Matildas did four years ago.
"I knew, when Tony came here, the team was at a bit of a cross-roads where it needed new players, it needed evolving and innovation," Ellis said.
"You needed someone who was going to work incredibly hard and smart, but also take this team on a journey. And I see that with Tony and what he's done.
"We came under immense criticism. Fans and media expected so much of this US team, so any slight deviation was like the sky was falling.
"But that's where you rally internally and you block it out. I was asked many times 'are you worried about losing your job?' and I would always answer: I'm not coaching to keep my job, I'm coaching what I believe, and I believe this team has to go through this evolution.
"If we didn't have that tough road, we wouldn't have won in 2019. It forced us to take a hard look and be innovative and reshape. So I think when Tony took over the team here, he knew they had to go through a similar evolution."
Ellis has been an ongoing mentor for Gustavsson through the highs and lows of his tenure so far, exchanging texts with him regularly that include little nuggets of wisdom, like a quote that she has on her desk from Winston Churchill: "if you're going through hell, keep going."
There have been a couple of hells for him since he took over in late 2020: whopping losses to European teams, an early Asian Cup exit, the two-game series loss to Canada, the Nigeria game.
But one thing Ellis praises about her former assistant is his resilience, and his belief that every moment over the past three years was part of a bigger plan: a plan that the rest of the world is now seeing come to fruition.
"You've got to believe in the process," she said.
"As a coach, when you start to show progress — whether it's data, whether it's performances, whether it's new players stepping up — you can see the progress, but people on the outside sometimes can't. That's where I think resilience is critical.
"Tony is very thoughtful in terms of mapping out a plan. This was not a 'let's just see how this unfolds' kind of tournament. Everything was with purpose: the teams he played, the trips he took, the games, the players he used. There was always a bigger purpose.
"I think this is a team that, when you started to see it fall into place, you know it's part of the bigger picture."
Part of that plan was playing France in a pre-tournament friendly; now a team they must defeat in order to qualify for their first ever semi-final.
Australia won that friendly 1-0 thanks to a goal from Mary Fowler — herself living proof of the journey Gustavsson has taken the team on — and now come into this match feeling more prepared than ever before, such is the Swede's close attention to detail and ability to plan for every possible scenario they could face.
"I watched this team when they played France in that preview game and I was like: 'they're ready, they look like a well-oiled machine'," Ellis said.
"And not having Kerr there, holy cow. I don't think people really appreciate how hard that is. That's like going to the Super Bowl without Tom Brady.
"For them to get to this point, managing her to the point where she can get more and more minutes, that's an extraordinary story.
"People around the world have said 'the Matildas aren't the Matildas without Sam Kerr,' but for other players to step up and play the way they've played, that takes a coach making them feel and really believe in their impact and ability to make a difference.
"What builds a winning culture is an exploration of what's already there. Sometimes to come in and strip something of what it is isn't good; you need to grow what you've got.
"And for me, teams that do well are teams that play with selflessness and joy for each other. One of the things I'd always start meetings with is pictures of the bench celebrating, because they're just as important as the people on the pitch. I see that in the Matildas: a culture of genuine joy."
There's one last thing that Ellis believes the Matildas have, which no other team in this tournament does in quite the same way. Something that can't be laid out on a whiteboard, can't be trained around cones or nets, can't be folded into nutrition or recovery.
They have a bigger purpose.
"This will be a defining moment in not just football but in sport for women," she said.
"It's that catalyst moment where you see a country embrace it. I've already seen that change, I've been reading about the numbers and the interest. I feel that energy here.
"People don't believe until they do believe. I think people are starting to see the power of what this is. You take all the sport aside; it is a platform which can showcase and bring along women en masse.
"This is their moment. This is their time. And I think they can go all the way."